Improve your desktop’s performance

Here are the simple tips to improve your desktop’s performance using the builtin tools provided by Microsoft. This basically concentrates on Disk related operations. The basic tips given are

Identify and repair disk errors

Hard disks can develop bad sectors. Once the bad sectors are developed, it will slow down hard disk performance, and subsequently can make data reading or writing impossible. The best practice for desktop maintenance is to perform disk check at regular intervals through Preventive Maintenance and detect this haphazards early and avoid data loss or even worst business failures. 2000, XP and 2003 has a builtin tool for disk check (chkdsk). Chkdsk utility can detect your hardisk’s bad sector issues and help you in better performance.

For more information

http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/windows/xp/all/proddocs/en-us/chkdsk.mspx?mfr=true

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;187941

Create Space for better performance

Your desktop’s performance can be improved by having more space.

Few areas which comes to mind for disk clean up are

– Browser Cache (usually this occupies more space)- Recycle bin

– Windows %TEMP% folder etc.

still there are other areas where you can free up disk space. Instead of digging for those areas and cleaning up manually, you can use disk cleanup tool (cleanmgr.exe). It is available in 2000, XP and 2003. It is builtin tool very useful in cleaning up the disk. It identifies files which can be deleted and also gives option to delete or not, which will give you absolute control over it.

For more information

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=315246

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=253597

Defrag to speed-up the disk access

Fragmentation in hard disks will bring down the desktops performance. Before proceeding with the defragmentation solution let me explain and list the resons for disk fragmentation. <>Disk fragmentation occurs when users create, delete, and resize files on their hard disks. This evergoing process affects continuous blocks of file segments to be fragmented (scattered). The more fragment the file is the more time to read it (it will have to search for each piece of file info and read) hence leading to performance degrade.

The solution for this is Defragmentation. Defragmentation cannot be done manually (as did in disk cleanup), there is a builtin tool available called defrag.exe to do this in 2000, XP and 2003 OSs. Defragmentation can be used in the following scenarios

– Copy/Paste or Delete large number of files- Install/Uninstall any new programs or upgrade your windows

– and have Schedule for once in a month

This tool can analyse and report about the disk status. For more information check these URLs

http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/windows/xp/all/proddocs/en-us/defrag.mspx?mfr=true

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/windows2000serv/maintain/optimize/w2kexec.mspx

Try the tips and experience the high performance desktop.