Discussion
How long should defragmenting of a 5.58GB laptop take?
I finally had a good clear out to release enough free space to do one effectively and set it going at around midday. It keeps going through the % of completion but then when I check on it again it's back to 1%....
Also, does using microsoft word at the same time affect the defragmentation process or risk me loosing all my work?
I finally had a good clear out to release enough free space to do one effectively and set it going at around midday. It keeps going through the % of completion but then when I check on it again it's back to 1%....
Also, does using microsoft word at the same time affect the defragmentation process or risk me loosing all my work?
I used Ashampoo Magical Defrag to defrag my two HDs a while back. It actually sits in the background and starts defragging when your PC is not in use.
To be honest there was no noticable performance increase after the defrag.
To be honest there was no noticable performance increase after the defrag.
ME will start from the beginning again if another program accesses the disk while its running, so as mentioned close all other programs and as far as possible close all the icons in the system tray next to the clock as well. If it still keeps restarting you might have to reboot in safe mode to run it!
You say it's running ME with a "new style start menu"?
Does it look like this www.infosatellite.com/images/articlepics/windows_me_screenshot1.jpg or this www.infosatellite.com/images/articlepics/windows_xp_screenshot2.jpg ?
Just checking to make doubly sure about the version of Windows.
If it's the second picture then Eeep! A laptop with a 5Gb drive really isn't going to take the abuse XP dishes out. I would suggest, if it's never been defragged before, stopping everything that's running (firewall, AV, spyware scanner, programs, utilities) and isolate the machine from the network; then let defrag run overnight. You might also want to run Scandisk first as a separate thing and tell ME's defrag utility to NOT check the disk for errors.
If you need some quick tips to boost performance then adding more memory (if possible) might help out and considering the age of the machine from the clues you've given it's probably PC-133 SO-DIMMS which would be relatively cheap.
Does it look like this www.infosatellite.com/images/articlepics/windows_me_screenshot1.jpg or this www.infosatellite.com/images/articlepics/windows_xp_screenshot2.jpg ?
Just checking to make doubly sure about the version of Windows.
If it's the second picture then Eeep! A laptop with a 5Gb drive really isn't going to take the abuse XP dishes out. I would suggest, if it's never been defragged before, stopping everything that's running (firewall, AV, spyware scanner, programs, utilities) and isolate the machine from the network; then let defrag run overnight. You might also want to run Scandisk first as a separate thing and tell ME's defrag utility to NOT check the disk for errors.
If you need some quick tips to boost performance then adding more memory (if possible) might help out and considering the age of the machine from the clues you've given it's probably PC-133 SO-DIMMS which would be relatively cheap.
it's fine. what's your CPU speed (type winmsd in the Start Run menu) and how much ram do you have?
Also as you are running XP you REALLY need to rebuild using NTFS as FAT32 is really bad and old.
You can start by turning off the Performance option under
Control Panel|System|Advanced| click performance settings and hit Adjust for best performance, then apply
while you are there also adjust your page file on the Advanced tab and set it to Min and Max equal to 1.5 times your physical ram (hopefully this is at least 256! eg use 768) - ie not managed by XP. This will stop it resizing it on the fly and slowing things down and will also re-write your page file from scratch (to be sure reduce it to zero, reboot, then put it to 1.5 times ram). if your computer is really slow you could also try reducing the colour depth of the screen to 16bit from 24bit under display properties
Also as you are running XP you REALLY need to rebuild using NTFS as FAT32 is really bad and old.
You can start by turning off the Performance option under
Control Panel|System|Advanced| click performance settings and hit Adjust for best performance, then apply
while you are there also adjust your page file on the Advanced tab and set it to Min and Max equal to 1.5 times your physical ram (hopefully this is at least 256! eg use 768) - ie not managed by XP. This will stop it resizing it on the fly and slowing things down and will also re-write your page file from scratch (to be sure reduce it to zero, reboot, then put it to 1.5 times ram). if your computer is really slow you could also try reducing the colour depth of the screen to 16bit from 24bit under display properties
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