Dear Computer Lady,

I just love your newsletter.  Thanks for all your hard work and for sharing with us.

I have Windows Vista, and just got the advanced vista optimizer program. My question is how do I defragment my computer and how often should it be done?

Thank you, Joyce

Dear Joyce,

It is very easy to defrag your hard drive using Advanced Vista Optimizer. For those of you who don’t already have this program, you can download a free trial using the download link below:

Download

Lets get started…

1. Open Advanced Vista Optimizer 2009.  Click the “Continue” button if prompted by Windows UAC.

2. In the main AVO window, click on “Speed Up” listed in the tools section on the left hand edge of the window.

3. In the Speed up section, click on “Disk Defrag”.

4. On the disk defrag page, select the drive you want to defrag (for most of us, it will be the “C:” drive.)

5. In the drive information section, select if you want to only analyze the disk to start, or defrag and analyze at the same time.

6. Click the “Start” button, and wait while the program examines your hard drive.

7. If you find that your drive does have fragmented files (mine had 93 fragmented files) just click on the “Defrag” button to start the process.