How to Defrag/Free disk space on a Windows Vista Computer.

Dalpra · Oct 24, 2009

This guide was created by Dalpra and his own resources, if anyone is found plagiarizing this guide on sythe.org or any other website, They will be reported and ultimately banned.

Windows Defragmentation/disk clean up is a useful device, which cleans up your hard drive. The benefits of this program are:

Faster PC

Cleans up unecessary files

Fixes up some errors.

Requirements:

You must be signed into the Administrator account on Windows Vista.

Step 1:

For the first step, click on the start icon and then on "Control Panel."

Step 2:

You should now be in the "Control Panel" interface, if so click on "System and Maintence."

Step 3:

Now that you've clicked on System and Maintence, Scroll down untill you see "Administrative Tools," then click on "Free up disk space."

Step 4:

A screen saying "Disk Cleanup" should pop up, you now have two options.

"My Files only" OR "Files from all users on this computer."

If you choose "My Files only," It will clean the files on the Windows account that you're on. If you've chosen "files from all users on this computer," It'll obviously clean all of the user files.

Now that you've done that wait for it to scan, it should look like this:

The scan could take anywere from a couple of minutes to an hour, depending on your PC speed.

Once that scan has finished a screen like this should pop up:

Note: Tick as many of the boxes you want, but be aware, once you clean these files you can not get them back! (even though they're all useless, I still have to remind you.)

Then press "Okay" once you've done that, it will ask if you want to permanently delete these files, click "Yes." Once you've done that, your disk will start cleaning, this process should take no longer then 10 minutes. (Varying on your computer speed.)

Congratulations, you've now cleaned up your disk drive. You should be already seeing results, varying on the ammount of disk space free'd.

Step 5:

Now for defragmentation!

Go back to "Administrative Tools" (Refer to steps 1 - 3.) Then click "Defragment your hard drive."

Note: YOU CAN'T DO THIS IF YOU'RE NOT AN ADMIN.

You should get a pop-up, asking you if you want to conitinue, click "Yes."

Once you've done that, this screen should come up.

Now click "Defragment Now."

An interface like this should pop up:

Leave both of them ticked, then press "OK."

Once you've done that, your computer will start defragmenting.

This can take anywhere from 3 minutes to a few hours, depending on the speed of your computer and the size of your C: drive.

Thanks for taking your time to read this guide, please post constructive critism, etc.