Disk Defragmenter

For Windows XP

Disk Defragmenter is a useful tool in improving the performance of your PC, specifically the time it takes for you to access the files and folders on your PC.

Have you ever noticed after you have used your PC frequently (especially a couple of years) the time it takes for you to search, browse and load up files takes longer.

This is because the files on your hard drive or hard disk become fragmented after frequent usage. This means that gaps of free space can occur when you have installed and removed various programs on your PC. Where these programs once were a gap is created, and when you install new programs Windows needs to decide whether to fill the gap or continue on into free space. What can eventually happen is that you end up with a certain set of files for a purpose being installed in multiple areas of the disk, and you are also left with empty unused spaces. The more you use your PC the more fragmented the disks becomes.

Therefore Windows has introduced 'Disk Defragmenter' to help reduce fragmentation on the drive by reorganising these files so that they are in one place, therefore increasing file access time.

In Windows Vista this is normally set to automatically run on a schedule. However in Windows XP it is not, it is good practice to defrag you PC on a monthly or quarterly basis but it depends how often and what you use your PC for. If you are using your PC to just browse the Internet, then defragmentation isn't required to be used on a frequent basis. But if you are using your PC to play games, whereby you install a lot of applications and remove them frequently, then defragmentation would be worth doing.

To access the 'Disk Defragmenter' click on 'Start', 'All Programs', 'Accessories', 'System Tools' and then 'Disk Defragmenter'.

Once you have opened 'Disk Defragmenter', the process is fairly simple. Select the drive you wish to fragment and then click the 'Analyze' button. Windows will then report if defragmentation is necessary. After that then click on 'Defragment', to start defragmenting the drive.

Warning: Defragmenting the drive can, more often than not, take a long time. The time it takes (usually hours) depends on several factors, such as the capacity (GB) of your disk, the number of files you have and the amount of fragmented files. Therefore you need to perform defragmentation when your PC is not needed in a while.

Disk Cleanup

For Windows OS: Vista/XP

'Disk Cleanup' is the tool to call on if you want to perform a general cleanup of unnecessary files or if you are low on disk space.

To run 'Disk Cleanup', click on 'Start', 'All Programs', 'Accessories', 'System Tools' and then 'Disk Cleanup'.


Here you can then select from a list file categories, the general ones being the 'Recycle Bin', 'Temporary Files' and 'Temporary Internet Files'. Each category indicates the space that can be freed up.

Warning: Make sure that you check the category's correctly and read the description for what each one does, for example you may not want to delete files from the Recycle Bin, that you might yet want to restore.

Windows Task Manager

For Windows OS: Vista/XP

This is the best utility that you can use to monitor the performance of your PC. The 'Task Manager' monitors which programs are being ran and how much of your system resources each program is taking up.

'Task Manager' is effective as it monitors the two main components that run your computer, the CPU and Memory. Without going into too much depth at this time, the CPU (Central Processing Unit), the chip at the core of your PC, it performs all the calculations that programs utilise to perform everyday tasks. The performance of CPUs are measured in several ways but mainly by its clock speed, which in today's standards is measured in gigahertz (GHz). There are two types of memory used by your computer, ROM and RAM, however it is RAM (Random Access Memory) that defines how much and what you can run at one time on your computer.

Therefore because the 'Task Manager' monitors the usage of these components against the programs being ran at any given time. It is effective as you can work out which programs are using up the most of your resources, and then work out if these programs are necessary to have on your PC. If all programs are necessary, it may be a good indication that you need to upgrade your PC. If you don't require the usage of some of the programs installed on your PC, then you can uninstall them or stop them from constantly running when you are not using them. (See 'The msconfig utility' for further details on stopping programs from running).

There are several ways to launch the 'Task Manager':

1.) Right click on the 'TaskBar' and select 'Task Manager'.
2.) Press 'Ctrl' and 'Alt', and then 'Delete' on the keyboard, you may need to then select 'Task Manager' from an option.
3.) Type 'taskmgr' into 'Run' on the 'Start Menu'.

There are other ways to launch the 'Task Manager' but these are the easiest ways to do so.

Once you have launched the 'Task Manager' you will be on the 'Applications' tab, on this tab you are given a basic view (but not the full picture) of what is being ran on your computer at that moment. This is generally a list of the programs that are open on your 'Start Menu'.

From here you can easily close the program by clicking on 'End Task', or navigate to the program by 'Switch To' and 'Bring to Front'.

To start checking the usage on resources from these programs, right click on a program that is open and select 'Go To Process'. If no programs are open at the moment click on the 'Processes' tab.

From my example as seen above, I have selected to see the 'Microsoft Paint' application process and this has taken me to the 'Processes' tab. Here you have list of all the programs that are being utilised by 'Windows' at that moment in time. 'Microsoft Paint' is being highlighted in blue and you can see the program being shown as it's executable (.exe), which indicates it is a program, in this case 'mspaint.exe'.

You can see the 'CPU' usage as a percentage from the column, in this case it is '00', as when this screenshot was taken, no activity was taking place, because I was using the 'Task Manager', process 'taskmgr.exe', which is using 6% of the CPU (as seen above). On the final column you can see 'Mem Usage', how much memory that is being used by the program, which for 'mspaint.exe' is '1,132 K', this is 1,132 kilobytes (KB), which is around 1 megabyte (MB). This however is low intensive application, PC games on the other hand can take up much more, such as 256MBs for examle.

Putting this into perspective then, on a PC that has 512MB of memory, it can be said that you are using 256 / 512, or a half of the memory that is available. Windows is clever though, in that it creates a paging file on the hard drive to use virtual memory to help you run more programs then what your memory can take. However this results in slow performance as the CPU needs to access the hard drive for memory usage which is much slower than accessing RAM, therefore it not recommended to exceed the physical memory limit installed on your PC.

Using the 'Processes' tab you can quickly identify at any given time the programs that are using the most resources on your PC. This is a powerful tool as you can remove any programs that you do not use, which is taking up a lot of resources, by identifying the '.exe' of the program, a search into 'Google' can usually determine what the program is. Programs that take up a lot of CPU usage, causing the overall CPU level to be over 80% will slow down the performance of your PC, the same can be said for memory. Programs using a lot of memory to the amount of the physical memory installed, will stop you from being able to run other programs smoothly or at all.

You can also stop a program from running at any time and usually immediately by using the 'End Process' button on the highlighted process. This is useful if you want to free resources or unstuck your PC by stopping a rouge exe (usually a virus) so that you can save other programs before determining what the problem is.

Warning: Take care to identify what process you are ending, you do not want to end a process that protects your PC, such as anti-virus or firewall software in a bid to free resources, if you can avoid it. Also do not end a process that is being used by Windows in order to run your PC, most of which are marked as 'System' in the 'User Name' column, as this may crash your PC, or force an automatic system restart.

The 'msconfig' utility

For Windows OS: Vista/XP

The 'System Configuration' utility or 'msconfig.exe' can be a very powerful tool in improving your system performance if used correctly, especially on PCs that have a lot of unnecessary programs that load up on startup.

It is important to note that even if a program does not appear on the taskbar, or in the 'Quick Launch' bar, it still can be running in the background of your PC as a program or a service, consuming resources, memory and processing power. I will write a post to follow, on how to use the 'TaskBar' effectively, soon. This utility will help you monitor which programs are consuming the most resources on your PC.

To access the 'System Configuration' utility, click on 'Start' from the taskbar, and then 'Run', Vista users can use the 'Start Search' box if they haven't got the 'Run' command enabled on the 'Start Menu'.

Type "msconfig" into the 'Run' or 'Start Search' box. This will then bring up the 'System Configuration' utility


Now that the utility is open, one of the best options you can use with ease is the 'Startup' tab. On this tab, you will see a list of programs that are installed on your PC. Here you can untick any programs, that you do not want to be launched at startup. This may be confusing at first because you may not recognise some of the items in the list.

This is effective in improving performance of your PC, as you can untick programs that you do not use, or would not want when the PC starts up, which reduces the time it takes for Windows to load up.

If you are unsure of what a particular item is, check the 'Command' column, this will inform you of what the program executable is, the ".exe", you can search for this program in 'Google' and that can normally turn up the nature of the program.


Warning: Unticking items in this list can be useful with programs you don't want running all the time. However you should use caution, as you don't want to untick any programs that protect or help your computer such as anti-virus or firewall software.

This utility is most helpful when you have several programs that you don't use all the time when you run your PC, such as Business applications loading up, when you are using your PC in your leisure time and have to wait a while before all there unnecessary programs load up.