How to make Windows faster and improve disk performance using the Disk Defragmenter in Windows Vista

If your wondering how to make Windows faster using the Disk Defragmenter In Windows Vista, you have come to the right page. This tutorial is for Windows Vista users only, for older versions of Windows, please see this tutorial.

In Windows Vista, the Disk Defragmenter tool has been made much easier to use. The program is still located in the same place on the start menu, that is Start->All Programs->Accessories->System tools->Disk Defragmenter. Windows Vista user account control may prompt you for your password when you first start the Disk Defragmenter. Once the Vista Disk Defragmenter has started, you will see the following window appear:-

There are now just three options we can perform. Ticking the box labelled “run on a schedule (recommended)” will make Windows Vista automatically defragment your hard drives at a given time. If you wish to use this option, make sure this tick box is ticked and then click on “Modify schedule...” This will take you to the window below, here we can show you how to make Windows faster automatically:-

In this window, you can set a time for disk de-fragmentation to run automatically and also set how often it runs. For most systems, monthly de-fragmentation is fine. Simply choose a time and a date that is convenient for you from the drop down menu boxes by clicking on them. Once this is set, press “OK”. You can now forget about manual disk de-fragmentation and let Windows Vista take care of it for you. If for any reason you want to run a manual disk de-fragmentation, simply click on “Defragment now”. The window will change to show you that disk de-fragmentation is taking place. Unlike the disk defragmenter in previous versions of Windows, the Windows Vista version de-fragments all your hard disk drives when you click on "Defragment now". You cannot select individual drives to de-fragment.

You can cancel the process at any time without doing any harm to your system. Unfortunately there is no detailed progress bar so no way of telling how much longer the process will take.

Back to How to make Windows faster
Back to home page

footer for how to make windows faster page