Defrag Multiple Hard Drives At Once In Windows

Defrag Multiple Hard Drives At Once In Windows

The Disk Defragment utility in Windows XP does not include a way to defragment all hard drives at the same time, which is inconvienient when you have more than one hard drive in your computer.

The method we are going to use is by creating a batch file to defragment all of the drives, one after the other.

The disk defrag utility in Windows XP can be triggered from the command line with the following syntax:


Windows Disk Defragmenter
Copyright (c) 2001 Microsoft Corp. and Executive Software International, Inc.
Usage:
defrag [-a] [-f] [-v] [-?]
volume drive letter or mount point (d: or d:\vol\mountpoint)
-a Analyze only
-f Force defragmentation even if free space is low
-v Verbose output
-? Display this help text

First, we’ll create a file named defragall.bat, and place it anywhere you like, as long as you’ll remember where it is. If you want to run it from the command line, you could place it in the \windows directory so that it will be available in the system path.

For each hard drive, add a line to the batch file. For instance, if we want to defragment drives C: , D: , and F: we will add these three lines:

defrag c: -f
defrag d: -f
defrag f: -f

To run the defrag, just either double-click on the batch file or start it from the command line.

Disable "Your computer might be at risk" Popup in Windows XP SP2

Since upgrading to XP SP2 a long time ago, I constantly get nagged by a popup message that tells me my computer might be at risk because I don’t have an antivirus software installed. Here’s how to turn off that annoying message.

Note: You should probably have antivirus software installed.

You will want to open up your control panel, and then open the Security Center icon.

On the left hand side of the security center window, you will see a resources section. Click the bottom link, “Change the way Security Center alerts me”

You can choose which alert to disable here. Since I don’t have antivirus software, I unchecked the bottom checkbox.

No more annoying popups!

Login Automatically on Windows XP Home / Professional

If your Windows XP installation forces you to login every time you reboot, you can automate the login process easily so that you won’t have to login again.

Note that for security reasons, you would usually want to have a password, but for a home computer you may not care.

Go to the Start menu, click Run, and type in the following:

control userpasswords2

You will be presented with a window similar to this one:

Uncheck the box, and click the OK button. You will be presented with a password dialog for the currently logged in user.

Now when you reboot your system, you will automatically be logged in.

This can be very useful when you are installing a bunch of software or testing out configurations.