no defrag

[papamama]

I used to defrag the hd regularly using Iobit defrag tool. I noticed about a month ago the defragging process was imperfect instead of telling me there were no clusters left, it said 500 fragments were left, then 600, etc... I thought it might be the defragger which was not the best, and looked for free trials. I now have all the possible ones on the laptop, but none is working. What am I missing? I have Avast anti-virus, windows firewall, ASC, CCleaner, etc... No virus, no spyware, and no defragmentation possible. Win 7 on Acer 1410.
Help please!
Thank you.

[Allan]

Download and run the trial version of Perfect Disk and see what happens.

[papamama]

I cannot manage to download it. I get the site, the free trial, give my username, wait for the mail they sent me. Then, by clicking on their answer, it gets me in another tab, where I am asked to choose between French, English, German and Spanish version. No matter what I pick up, it opensa new page which is just blank!!!

[Broni]

Define "none is working".

[Azzaboi]

I assume your using Advanced SystemCare...
Iobit Defrag Tool I believe works in background when the system is idle. Windows 7 hardly needs any defragging anyway.

You don't normally need to do this, but if your got a processor heavy virus scanners. To force kick trigger idle tasks to run (after ensuring the computer isn't running anything processor hungry):
Start > Run > type 'Rundll32.exe advapi32.dll,ProcessIdleTasks' without the quotes and press enter.

It's recommended to first do a spring clean removing junk files you don't need before the defrag, removing temporary internet files, temp setup files, etc.

Ensure you have at least 12% hard drive space free when defragging (15% recommended), no matter the size of the drive. Not enough space means defrag will take longer or never be able to complete with fragmented large files.

Run a 'chkdsk' and scan for any hard drive errors, repair any damage first else defragging could spread errors.

Defragging can take a while, leave overnight if it's heavily fragmented. Also make sure sleep mode, screen savers, idle virus scanning, etc, are disabled which might affect it - simply turn off the monitor instead. Don't cancel it during this process, it will make it more fragmented and take twice as long next time! Don't use the computer heavily or move files around either.

Some files might be system locked and the defragging software won't be able to move them - this could be the Windows Page file, etc. You can remove/disable during the defrag and recreate it dumping to the end of the drive at a fixed size (usually 1.5x your total RAM) to prevent getting fragmented but this requires some advance work and best for an normal user to just ignore.

Afterward it's a good idea to also defrag your boot (computer startup):
Start > Run > type 'defrag -b %SystemDrive%' without the quotes and press enter.

[Allan]

I cannot manage to download it. I get the site, the free trial, give my username, wait for the mail they sent me. Then, by clicking on their answer, it gets me in another tab, where I am asked to choose between French, English, German and Spanish version. No matter what I pick up, it opensa new page which is just blank!!!

Not sure why you're having that problem, but okay. Try the trial version of Diskeeper: http://www.diskeeper.com/

[soybean]

I now have all the possible ones on the laptop, but none is working.

Name them.  If more than one of them automatically defrags, as does IObit's Smart Defrag (I use it in my Win XP system), maybe there's some conflict between defraggers.  Perhaps you should uninstall all but one and just try using one at a time.

Also, are you sure you allowed the defragmentation process to run to completion?

[papamama]

I tried, but there must be something running on the computer preventing programs from being downloaded. It may be Advanced System Care, which I use, yes. Or an other one...
When I click to download it, whether the one or the other, on the mail link, a new windows opens, and after a few seconds, stops doing anything. It remains like a new window, called "untitled", and saying "done at the left bottom. Obviously, there is a program preventing the download.
As defrag tools, I have ASC, Auslogics, A shampoo -working in the background-, Windows utilities, Piriform defraggler, the one from Windows, I suppose... I looked for new ones when Iobit's stopped defragging everything.
I have 60 gb used on the hd, out of 250 available.
And I do wish I knew a bit more - or even better a lot more - about computers, but I am jsut about the average Joe, with some knowledge around holes of lack of information 100 times bigger than the amount mastered.
Thanks a lot for your help.
By the way, how come Win 7 hardly needs to be defragmented? what is different?

[soybean]

I have ASC, Auslogics, A shampoo -working in the background-,

So, three defragers running in the background, right?  Not good.  As I previously stated, try just using one for awhile. 

[Computer_Commando]

Try this one, it's free;  http://www.piriform.com/defraggler

[Azzaboi]

Win7 almost fixed what resource hog Vista screwed up with the memory management and file access... less file swap means less fragmentation and better performance. I've only defragged Win7 once a year ... it's always been on 0% fragmentation, Vista needs it every 3-6 months and WinXP even relies on it more due to the way they manage the system.

Basically the way fragmentation occurs is applications and games, etc, are installed on your hard drive or your system is busy creating files. However, when you uninstall, delete or move something it leaves a gap in the middle which gets fulled up by the next file, if that file is too large for the spot it scatters different fragments to different areas of free space it can find. This in turn slows down the system when scanning to read those fragments. The more files being moved around, installs / uninstalls, page file size adjustments, etc, the more fragmentation is likely to occur with a Microsoft OS.

Linux has a smarter file management system which doesn't need it at all.

Iobit's software contains a collection of system ultilities, the overall one is 'Advanced System Care' which contains a defragger.

There's also 'IOBit Security 360' to add protection, they lock down some files and prevent them from moving, being deleted or modified. This shouldn't affect any defrag application but might conflict with some anti-virus software.

IOBit's main defrag software is called 'Smart Defrag' which orders applications and the system better than a standard defrag.

Ashampoo also has a application called 'Magical Defrag'.

If your using multible applications ensure they aren't conflicting with each other to doing the same load of work over again. Ensure only one of the applications (normally the anti-virus) runs in the background continously and also keep the idle background processors to a minimum. Not only do they conflict, but can lock up each other and slow down system performance. Set the less important to manual scan only and run them only when you want.

[patio]

Stop preaching that Win7 does not need defragging...it's getting old and simply is not true.

[Azzaboi]

Oh mercy, oh mercy, mercy... and he said to the deaf / blind non-believers...

Read what I said dude, I didn't say anything about 'Win7 does not need defragging', I said it was better than it was in previous versions. I said it's almost fixed and doesn't need it as much. Linux is the one that doesn't need it at all.

[Broni]

Vista - bad, Win 7 - great
Ughhhh....tired of hearing that nonsense over and over...

[Azzaboi]

Watch the comedy movie 'Thank you for smoking (2005)' where the guy teachs his son about which is better - vanilla or chocolate icecream. Maybe then you will understand the basics.

Your got one side saying omg chocolate is the best favour icecream, the other side continously arguing you can't beat the classic vanilla favour. Then your got me... I don't take friggen sides, I don't need to prove one is better over the other in a bias never-ending argument, I just say yeah they are both crap but point out one is slightly less crappy than the other, it's still up to you what you have.