[GrumpyHermit]

I tried it for several days; before I used it for the first time, I defragged using the Windows XP system defrag utility. DiscKeeper Lite upon first running indicated that the drive was horribly fragmented; well, maybe it looks at things differently than Windows does.

I found that DiscKeeper Lite would initiate a pop-up window at various times, asking me to defrag, even when all I had done was some simple websurfing. Worse, when I went to check the results against the Windows XP defrag utility, I discovered that DiscKeeper Lite had hijacked it, and popped its own defrag up in place of the Windows defrag. I had to uninstall DiscKeeper Lite in order to get access to the Windows defrag. Luckily I got it back, I was worried that the changes DiscKeeper made would permanently delete the Windows defrag.

I can't recommend DiscKeeper Lite as a quality software. It's rubbish.

[hewee]

Never used DiscKeeper Lite but I heard that it was ok till now.

Now DiscKeeper Lite may be like Norton Speed Disk and it defags thing in a order that is not the same way as Windows Defrag. So you should not go back and use the other one. You should stay with the one and only use the one.
What I mean is the order they each defrag in. Norton moves the swap file to the front of the drive and the trash to the end. There are lots of options you can make in the order that it defrags.
But after your all done if you use another defrag program it will look at it in the order that it defrags so it world say you need to defrag again.

[SIR****TMG]

i have norton system cleaner program and i hate it.....it does what hewee says and i like xp cleaner better............

[mach9]

Excellent information Hewee. I use O & O for several months now. It gives you 5 options for defrag method. I love that choice. I use the USE method, which seems to be something like whatever you use frequently is lined up to be most available. Another choice sounds more linear, analogous to alphabetizing your files. It's therefore clear that each method would see the other method as leaving computer files and folders quite fragmented, and that's within the same app. Yes. Great advice. Choose one method and stick with it. The stealth method seems to be an ongoing, , lifetime work in progress. If you switch between methods, or switch programs, you'll be getting confusing info from the program if you aren't aware that the programs may be using different methods. Thanks Hewee for that clarification.

[twotugs]

Sorry you had a bad experience with Diskeeper Lite, GrumpyHermit. I use it, and prefer it to the default defrag utility that comes with XP. Believe it or not, the company that makes Diskeeper (the Lite version, too), also had a hand in the XP defrag tool.

http://support.microsoft.com/default...&Product=winxp

You're right, the pop-ups can be a bit annoying (it has a habit of appearing right at a critical moment in Goldminer ). I think you can stop it by changing the startup priority to "Manual" from "Automatic." You'll have to run it periodically, same as the XP defragger.

Keep in mind that Diskeeper Lite is free; if you want the good stuff, you usually have to pay for it (Diskeeper 8 is $45 for XP Pro, $30 for XP Home, and I don't know why there's a difference between the two). I like Lite, though, so I'll keep using it. I just have to do a lot of stuff manually, like occasionally moving the paging file to another drive to defrag my XP partition. BTW, here's a good read on that:

http://support.microsoft.com/default...NoWebContent=1

[Skivvywaver]

I use diskeeper pro. I like it alot. The boot time defrag is awesome and I have it set to defrag every night while I'm sleeping. If there are storms and I shut down for the night I do a manual defrag. I prefer defragging daily to any other schedule. I figure if it takes 2-3 minutes a day to defrag it is better than an hour once a month. It still comes out to the same amount of time but I never have a fragged HDD. It is all in what you like I guess. It defrags both drives at the same time. A real time saver for me.