Defragmenting your hard drive is one the easiest things you can do to speed up your computer, did I mention it’s also free.  Fragmentation happens when the computer stores files in random spaces on your hard drive, over time it will this slows the computer down because it takes more time to find files, as opposed to having the files organized in close proximity so they can be found quicker which is what defragmenting does.  Some people know about defragging there hard drives some don’t , but most people forget to do it.  What i suggest is that you make a scheduled task to do this for you, running defrag can bring some computers to a crawling halt so it’s best to do when you’re not going to be using it.

 To schedule a task in windows xp, (very similar in other versions of windows), simply go to START, ALL PROGRAMS, then ACCESSORIES, then SYSTEM TOOLS and click on SCHEDULED TASKS.  Next you click on ADD SCHEDULED TASK and follow the prompts until it asks you to pick a program to schedule.  Here you’ll click BROWSE and go to WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\defrag.exe next you can click weekly or monthly and choose when you’d like to schedule it.  Personally i suggest once a week but that’s up to you. That’s it now your computer defrags and speeds itself up on it’s own.