Metropol

Does disk defragmenting make a noticeable difference to the performance of Windows XP?

Does it make it run faster?

depends how fragmented your file system is.

if you run the defragmentation tool and there is lots of red and it says 'you should defragment this volume' then you probably should.

as you probably know windows tries to make best use of the space possible on the disk so it breaks the files up into smaller pieces, if for whatever reason regularly used application files are fragmented then the time taken to load will be extended whilst the operating system pieces together all the bits of the file in the background.

defragmentation is one of those housekeeping tasks, like a full virus and spyware scan which you should do regularly - if you do it every week you'll find it only takes a couple of minutes to complete.

Thanks, I'll let you know how I get on...

Well I did it last night (disk defragmentation that is) and whilst I can't say it runs that much faster, it certainly starts up a whole lot quicker.

Jovis wrote:Well I did it last night (disk defragmentation that is) and whilst I can't say it runs that much faster, it certainly starts up a whole lot quicker.

...so it runs faster. :roll:

Reeves wrote:

Jovis wrote:Well I did it last night (disk defragmentation that is) and whilst I can't say it runs that much faster, it certainly starts up a whole lot quicker.

...so it runs faster. :roll:

Well, once its loaded up, no it doesn't.

Nah - it never makes any diffrerence to what you see. Makes 'puter more efficient that's about it.

Jovis wrote:

Reeves wrote:

Jovis wrote:Well I did it last night (disk defragmentation that is) and whilst I can't say it runs that much faster, it certainly starts up a whole lot quicker.

...so it runs faster. :roll:

Well, once its loaded up, no it doesn't.

Checked for Viruses and Spyware?

If your computer runs too slowly, it's 99% certain to be because you have too many programs in Start Up and running as background processes.
Click Start > Run, type msconfig, OK, then go to the Startup tab and uncheck all the boxes for applications you know you don't need. For applications you don't recognise do a google search to find out of they are essential (you'll get an instant result just by typing in the filename), if not uncheck it. Then hit OK and restart - and enjoy!

I never really had a problem with slow running or start up speeds anyway. I'd already done the whole msconfig, and others. I just wondered if it would make any noticeable differences on top of that.

Sorry, I should have explained.