The Microsoft Windows operating systems offer many different tools which they claim help to improve the speed and performance of the every day computer. As the Windows operating system is built for easy access rather than fancy designs or computer programmers, they are easy to execute and are advised to be performed on a weekly basis.
The main Clean Up tool is the System Defrag which helps to improve the speed of the hard drive by moving the connecting parts of each file next to each other, so that when the file is called by the user it is easily accessible on the hard drive. When the document is saved on a hard drive, the disk splits the data into many various little pieces and try to fit as many as possible on the disk, optimising the use able space of the disk. However, when the computer asks for that document,the hard drive than has to identify and collect all of the pieces of information from the drive and prepare them for use, which on some systems can take an age. A disk defrag collects all the pieces for one file, and saves them together so that when the file is called it can be reached quicker, speeding up the system.
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| The Windows System Defrag Screen |
Another of the Windows tools is the actual Disk Cleanup utility itself. This handy programme cleans out all unwanted files from the hard drive and permanently deletes them, hence speeding up the system due to the fact that it is not storing files which are not used and not needed. Along with this, it allows a choice of preset areas to clean (Windows Components, Installed programmes and System Restore) which will automatically determine what to delete and quickly perform the clean up. The disk cleanup allows for a choice of drives, meaning that the user can not only choose what files to delete (from temporary Internet files to the recycle bin and everything in between), but to limit the drives it deletes them from. This is particularly useful on servers or multiple user systems, as data needed by one user is not necessarily needed by the other, but is still needed by the system.
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| The Windows 7 Disk Cleanup Utility |
Another way to speed up a computer is to regularly format the drives it uses. Using the Windows Backup Utility, save all of the important and needed data (both user and system saved as they are all needed to run the computer), and save execute the backup to another operating system within the computer on a second hard drive, as to ensure that the data is safe. By booting the computer to the second hard drive and operating system, using the Windows Formatting Tool select the other hard drive and format with the default settings. Doing this will (when the operating system and data is re-installed to the newly formatted drive) speed up the drive as it has had a thorough clean and all of the useless or unneeded information has been deleted.
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| The Windows XP Formatting Tool |
