JkDefrag HowTo -- the Free Software, amazing MSWindows rejuvenater!

I have come across enough MSWindows machines that run dog-slow that this simple fix will often highly impress the person who was complaining about their Windows system being slow.

Briefly here are the top reasons (IMHO) for a MSWindows slowdown to begin with -- note that NONE of these affect a GNU/Linux system.

1. Fragmented hard drive -- even if Windows' built-in defragger says the drive is OK, it probably isn't.
2. Malware -- viruses and the like all use up system resources, slowing you down, changing your browser pages, capturing your keystrokes at the bank websites, and a lot more.
3. Autostart programs -- do you really need Office Quickstarter? Quicktime to start at login? There are dozens of these auto-starting apps, all using resources unneccessarily. See "Dominant Monkey Theory"
4. Security Apps -- yep all those firewalls and antivirus programs, which a Windows machine truly should be running, use up resources as well and slow you down.

These are the most common reasons for a Windows slowdown and other issues, but it doesn't cover problems with Bit Rot, with the Windows Registry, and with the many many other issues that Windows can have.

So other than removing the junk with ClamWin, Spybot, AdAware, and HiJackThis, and after stopping a lot of stuff from starting with the Microsoft built-in app 'msconfig', I love giving a good defrag to the system. Here is how.

1. Download JkDefrag.zip from here. This GPL Free Software application uses the Windows defragment libraries but in a smarter way than the built-in Defrag program does. Unpack (aka 'unzip', if you must) the downloaded JkDefrag.zip on, say, your desktop.
2. Open a Command Prompt ([Start menu] > Run ... > cmd [enter]).
3. Use 'cd' to 'change directory' to the place where you unpacked JkDefrag. For example (depending on the folder name),

   cd Desktop\JkDefrag-3.36

4. At the command prompt, (looks like > symbol on MSWindows), first run

   jkdefrag.exe -a7 c:

   and let JkDefrag run fully until it finished -- note this may take an hour or more. Or less. The '-a7' flag tells JkDefrag to optimize for apps to start faster, by putting all of a programs' files together on the hard drive for faster access. Once that is done, run

   jkdefrag.exe c:

   to just run a regular defragment on your C:\ drive.

See the screenshot for some more information on this, including the steps 1-4, visually. Click it to make it much larger and more readable.

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