Computer defrag question

[ollie]

I've heard if you're nice enough that your Mac will defrag you.

[Northern Wish]

1) If you're running XP, check out www.tweakxp.com; there are lots of things you can turn off in XP that don't make a lick of difference other than appearance.

2) Download some kind of spyware/ adware cleaner- run it and quarantine any neccesary files; It sounds like you've got background activity. To examine this, open your task manager (ctrl alt del) and see which programs are using your disk.

3) Final solution, if you have all of your disks for XP etc.- save all of your stuff to cd or dvd; and then reformat the entire computer and reload your OS, and start from scratch.

[mattm]

Your problem is not one of fragmentation and that will only really affect the speed of loading big files that are fragmented (in other words you will not notice a big difference after defragging). Backup all your data and reinstall windows and your computer will be fast again. If you don't want to reinstall windows, get a friend to do it and then have them make sure there isn't a tonne of crap loading at startup (Start->Run, type msconfig, go to the startup tab and then google each thing in there to see if you need it or not then shut off all the crap like things that automatically run update checks and quicktime/adobe crap...).

Basically, your computer is fine, your windows installation has too much shit going on in it. If your computer fails, it will fail way harder like not booting or making lots of loud noise or blue screens of death.

[bouche]

You can get a new computer for under $500 bucks if you want.

[mattm]

I concur, just get a new computer. My desktop is slow too and I really want a new one...