Here's our Windows 95/98 Tip for.. April 24, 2002
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Defragmenting Your Hard Drive Automatically
Defragmenting your hard drive is one of the best and easiest ways to keep your computer running at peak performance, but who has the time? Defragmenting, after all, takes a while, especially in these days of multi-gig hard drives. And while the Defragmenter can run in the background while you're working, this slows performance. Your best bet for defragmenting your hard drive is to perform the action automatically on a weekly basis using Microsoft's Task Scheduler.

To set up a weekly defrag session, go to Start, Programs, Accessories, System Tools, and choose Scheduled Tasks (if you have Task Scheduler running in your System Tray, you can just double-click that). Double-click Add Scheduled Task and click Next. Choose Disk Defragmenter from the list of programs, and click Next. Select the frequency with which you want to run the program, click Next, and then choose the day and time. As long as you leave your computer on all the time, set the Defragmenter to operate during the night, while you're sleeping.