Defragging your machine:

Why should we defragment machines?

When you defrag your machine, you are making your machine work better. Defragging puts all of the pieces needed to run your program in a close proximity to each other on the hard drive.

When you delete programs in your hard drive, you leave empty spaces where pieces of the program were inserted during installation. When you load a new program, the computer goes to the first available slot to place all the parts, so your program could be loading pieces at the beginning, middle and end. This forces your hard drive to hunt all over in accessing all the pieces and putting them together to run your application.

By defragging the machine, all the program pieces will be moved and put together so your hard drive can run optimally and access programs as fast as it is capable of doing. The machine is smart enough to realize which program you use most often and make them more accessible in the hard drive itself so that it can be accessed even more quickly.

Defragging your machine should be part of your regular maintenance. Twice a month should keep your machine running at optimal level. If you load and delete programs often, then defrag more often.

Before defragging your machine, close all open Windows programs.

Step 1: Start/Programs/Accessories/System Tools/ScanDisk
Follow this shorthand until you open ScanDisk. If you have not done a ScanDisk in awhile, I would suggest clicking on Thorough. If you have a weekly schedule for maintenance, then just the Standard will be sufficient. Select the hard drive you wish to scan and click on start. After this process is finished, go to the next step.

Step 2:Start/Programs/Accessories/System Tools/Disk Defragmenter
Follow the shorthand steps until you open Disk Defragmenter.
Select the drive to defrag and click ok and it will defrag your hard drive.

Another way :
Double click on My Computer and right click on the drive you wish to defrag.
Select properties.
Go to the Tool tab.
You can select the button Check Now by Error-Checking Status to use the ScanDisk tool, then select the button Defragment Now by Defragmentation status.
Depending on how large your hard drive is, this process will take anywhere from 20 minutes to over an hour.

It is advisable to do this at the end of the day when you don't need to use your machine.