Bad computer performance

During my illness earlier this week I decided to do some mind numbing tasks to keep me occupied - coding was giving me a headache, but my mind was still overactive so I got down to some good ol' fashion XP speed tweaks.

One performance issue that was bugging me big time was my laptop's sluggish performance using Outlook 2007 amongst other things. It was so slow it was unreasonable, especially for a core 2 duo with 2GB ram. I hadn't run a defrag since I first got the system so it was due for a reshuffle. The following quickened things up a bit (run in this order to get best results):

1. Delete all the junk. As much email as possible (my mailbox was over 2gb), all that crap freeware that I only ever used once, temp internet files, old log files, etc, etc.
   
2. Run a system wide defrag:
   (all programs > accessories > system tools > disk defragmenter)
   This will take a long time to run (e.g. 3 or 4 hours) if it hasn't been done for a while.
   This operation will most likely skip a couple of files because they are in use – mainly outlook and desktop search. After the defrag has run, run it again, but instead of doing a full defrag, just do an analyze. In the analyze feedback, take a note what files are still significantly large and fragmented.
   
3. Then use the “contig” tool to defrag individual problem files that the windows disk defragmenter can’t fix. You can get the contig tool here.
   
   http://technet.microsoft.com/en-au/sysinternals/bb897428.aspx
   
   Be sure to install it in your windows/system32 folder. It’s a command line tool that you’ll need to follow the instructions as set out in the link above.
   
   Outlook.ost and the desktop search index file are the main ones you want to defrag individually as they are huge files (my outlook file was 2.7Gb in 650 fragments. My search index file was 345Mb in over 3500 fragments). If you're a gamer who plays Guildwars or similar, running contig on the ".dat" or main game files should also speed things up. Only do this after a full system wide defrag, and you have stopped the processes in task manager (e.g. outlook.exe, etc) as the first 2 steps free up large amounts of continuous disk space needed for the larger defragmented files.
   
   More info on the contig tool here: http://whall.org/blog/2008/02/02/defraggle-rock/#more-1812
   
4. As a last resort, reformat the hard drive and reinstall the operating system. Say goodbybe to 2 days minimum to get things back the way they were.... especially when apps like Visual Studio take hours to install.
   
5. Next time you get a new computer - get a faster hard drive. Laptops especially have slower RPM hard drives to save battery life - but once alot of files get piled on the system slow down will happen. Solid state hard drives should become more mainstream this year, get one if you can live with slightly less space.