Posted 15 January 2011 - 10:54 AM
Defragging has nothing to do with how many programs are running, but in how many little pieces and places a single file might be stored. When the computer needs to read the file it has to go to each of those places in turn, which takes time (especially when using a spinning hard disk, with read heads mechanically moved from place to place on the disk).
To defrag I don't use the built-in routine provided by Windows, for a number of technical reasons. I prefer to use "Ultimate Defrag" in its free version (of course!), as it's much more powerful and once you understand what it's doing much more useful.
To reduce the number of programs running at a time I do several things. Firstly I try to avoid leaving programs running when I've finished using them. I close them rather than just minimising them. Secondly I try to ensure programs I don't need don't start automatically so they're running in the background and using up computer resources. There are Windows routines to do this, but I find Winpatrol (again, the free version!) to be a very user-friendly and powerful way of doing this. Just be sure not to turn off programs that you may not recognise but which in fact are necessary for your mouse or your display or whatever to run.
Periodically, probably several times a day, I reboot my computer. This used to be unavoidable with XP and Vista, but I still find with 7 that every now and again my computer loses interest in playing with me and a sharp boot up the peripheral does the trick. The other reason for rebooting is that during normal operations Windows grabs resources, and even now in 2011 MS still haven't worked out how to release those resources when the need for them has gone away. So the machine gradually clogs up, and a reboot clears the decks for a fresh try. Apple mastered this right from the start, but not Microsoft.
And I use a good (paid for!) anti-malware program. I choose to use Bullguard because I'm familiar with it and like it. The only one I've tried in the past and actively dropped is Norton, but I'm sure there are lots of other good ones. I use a pay one rather than one of the free offerings because mine offers rapid real-time updating of virus definitions, and I've never been convinced that the free ones do. When new viruses appear they can infect you computer in the time between their introduction and your anti-malware software being notified that they are to be blocked. Even with the very best software this interval can never be brought down to zero, so it's a good idea periodically to scan your system disk and any other disks you use for problems. I tend to scan the system disk once weekly, and the others about monthly. A full scan of a 2tb disk can run all night and well into the next day, and when a scan is running you don't want to be using your computer for anything else - it runs slowly, and files in use are blocked from being scanned.
