[paulb100]

I wonder if anyone has experienced the same as me.....
when i defrag peoples hard-drives it seems to slow performance...mostly at the point
where it starts windows and starts to load the startup apps...

even on PCs that are a few years old and have never been defragged...

now im aware of prefetching etc but the speed of starting the startup apps is really slow and doesnt get any faster again....

its happened that many times on so many PCs ive looked at I now never bother defragging unless its over 5 years old and/or is at a virtual stop after basic cleanup...

this results from Windows Defrag.... is there any better that actually speeds up the PC?

[Crusnik]

I'm actually curious to this myself. I've tried this in the past, but read it actually doesn't help at all:

http://www.pctipsbox.com/make-programs-load-faster/

I also read using a reg cleaner sometimes will help. The larger the registry, the longer it'll take for the OS to boot.

[Marbleman]

I've never seen defrag to slow down a PC. Quite the opposite actually when it comes to file access since heavily fragmented files and importantly, a fragmented MFT can cause a slowdown. Have you also done a boot-time defrag to defragment the MFT and paging files?

The windows defragmenter does not defrag the MFT, and AFAIK, getting it to perform a boot-time defrag needs some work in the registry. You can try a third party defragmenter trial version (Diskeeper has a free 30 day trial for eg, at their website) and see if it improves things.

As for registry cleaners, I am really wary about them. I've had some bad experiences a few years ago, and don't use those since.

[MichaelDee]

I've never noticed a pc slowdown after a defragment. I also use CCleaner to cleanup the registry, get rid of temps, etc. Its got a lot of options that you can use to keep certain files, etc.

[zbd21]

In my experience speed has increased most using

1. ccleaner
http://majorgeeks.com/download4191.html

2. removing older system restore points
http://computercleanup.blogspot.com/...m-restore.html

3. using advanced windows care
http://majorgeeks.com/Advanced_Windo...nal_d4991.html

[Crusnik]

Looks like the folks that offer Advanced Windows Care also offer a defragger as well:

http://www.iobit.com/iobitsmartdefrag.html

Might be worth trying.. I'm going to try it!