If you are running on windows,first quit all applications. Deactivate antivirus utilities, screen savers and other programs running in the background. To ensure you've quit all programs in Windows ,Ctrl+Alt+Delete once not twice or you will shut your computer down.

You will be shown list of applications running. Highlight each application one by one and click on End Task to close them one at a time.

You should than click twice on My Computer to open the My Computer window. You should than choose the hard disk that you want to defragment,go to Properties in the shortcut File menu. You should see the Properties window for the drive that you selected. Click the Tools tab and than click the Defragment Now button.

AS for Macs, they don't usually supply the disk-defragmentation program with Mac OS, but 3rd party utilities will include 1.

Regular defragmentation of the hard disk will ensure that your hard disk operates efficiently.

These are surely very important stuff that each user of the computer must know even before using it, so I suppose that everyone know these valuable information, you can also add that doing a scan for each hard drive is a very important thing to do from time to time, because it fixes errors: you can do that by going to My computer and then right click your hard drive icon e.g C:/ or D:/ click properties/ tools/Checknow then a window will popup, so check the two squares so that the computer fixes the errors. And click start, the scan will probably start after you reboot your computer.

I agree with you Hadi, many times we take for granted that our computer will function smoothly and panic when something goes wrong,when sparing just a few minutes each day doing mantainance will save us alot of trouble. Also, quite often alot of people are not aware of the many utilities included in the Windows Operating System that help mantain the computer eg disk defrag,system restore etc. I suggest we all spare some free time to explore these functions as you never know when they will come up handy. They are usually located at Start--->Accessories--->System Tools.

This post has been edited by lawmatchmaker: Jun 10 2006, 01:35 PM

hmm cool. I will have to try this out. How long does it take? If i have 2 internal drives C:/ drive with programs and things on it and a D:/ with just windows and other system software should i do it to both or just one of the two?

How long a defrag takes depends on how big your hard drives are, how corrupted your hard drives are,how fast your computer is among other factors. If this is the first defrag of your harddrive since a very long time, it could take quite awhile maybe even up to a whole day, so I suggest you just run the defrag programme in the background and do other things. Fortunately, after your first defrag and if you defrag regularly say once a week, the whole process takes a much shorter time and you will notice the difference in performance too.

Hey that was good tutorial.I will try this.Hey do you ahve any methods to keep life of floppy longer than actual.That is it gets bad sectors after 2 or three uses.what to do?

Usually, formatting the floopy should help, but remember its just a thin piece of plastic so store it in its casing until you need to use it, and keep it dry to prevent fungus growth. If data is really important should burn it into cd instead, luckily floopy is inexpensive so replacing it is a good option, but remember to back up the data somewhere else before the floopy goes bad.

I heard of some floppy cleaner thing, it's a product you can buy that contains a floppy with microscopic brushes. So you put this floppy into your floppy reader and it automatically clean it. And also there is some sort of a lquid that you can put on the length of the floppy, and it repairs it. That's what the guy in the store told me but I never tried it so don't blame me if something went wrong. You can find these in any compter parts shop. It's also available for CDs

I've tried defragmenting my hard drive in he past, and there were no noticable speed increases. Ever since, I have given up on defragging (although that was in the days of Windows 98, things may have changed in XP). As far as defragging floppies, there is no point, especially since floppies are almost extinct (I would have to pay for it if I wanted a floppy drive in my machine).