Schedule a Task to Defragment Drives
Published: August 20, 2001
Submitted by Thomas Gehrke, Paducah, Kentucky
Defragmenting drives is an important part of maintaining a smoothly running computer. Users upgrading from Windows 95, Windows 98, or Windows ME may be used to scheduling a task to defragment drives. Here's how to do the same thing in Windows XP:
1. | Open Control Panel, click Performance and Maintenance, and then click Scheduled Tasks. |
2. | Double click Add Scheduled Task to open the Scheduled Task Wizard, and then click Next. |
3. | Click Browse, navigate to the %systemroot%\system32 folder, select defrag.exe, and click Open. |
4. | Use the wizard to set a schedule for when to run the defragmentation program, and be sure to supply a password for the account on which you want the task to run. |
5. | Check the box for Open advanced properties for this task when I click Finish. |
6. | On the Run line, add the drive letter for the drive to be defragged. For example, %SystemRoot%\System32\Defrag.exe %HomeDrive% |
Now the defragmenting task will be run according to your schedule.
