Using your free System Utilities Suite

Once you've downloaded and installed everything to assemble our free System Utilities suite, it's time to put it to work. I recommend following these steps about once a week. There are benefits for performing the defragment actions on an even more frequent basis, so if you can do it more often, go for it!

Step 1: CCleaner


We're going to use CCleaner for 3 things:

1. Deleting "junk" files from the hard drive
2. Removing invalid entries from the Registry
3. Disabling unwanted startup items.

So fire up CCleaner, and let' get started...

1. From CCleaner's Cleaner view, click on "Analyze".
   
2. Once the analysis is complete, you're presented with a list of the files CCleaner has identified to delete. Chances are, these can all go, so hit the "Run Cleaner" button. This will clean out all of temporary and otherwise unnecessary files from your computer (cookies, anything in your Recycle Bin, etc.)
   
3. For good measure, go ahead and perform steps 1 and 2 again. You never know: CCleaner might actually find a few extra files that can be deleted.
   
4. In CCleaner's Registry view, click "Scan for Issues".
5. Once the scan is complete, you'll see a list of Registry entries that can be deleted. Click on "Fix selected issues..."
6. CCleaner will volunteer to back up your Registry, and you might as well do it, so click "Yes".
7. Once the Fix Issue dialogue appears, click on "Fix All Selected Issues"
8. You might as well repeat steps 4-7, since the first registry purge will often make new entries unnecessary as well, and if you run a new scan, CCleaner will find these new issues.
   
9. In CCleaner's Tools view, click on the Startup button. For any item listed you don't want to load automatically when your computer starts(qttask.exe, ituneshelper.exe, etc.), highlight the entry and click "Delete Entry".

Step 2: NTRegopt


NTRegopt will do one thing: defragment and shrink your Registry. This is a two-step process:

1. Start NTRegopt.
2. Once the program has completed optimizing the Registry, say "yes" at the prompt to restart your computer.

Step 3: PageDefrag


PageDefrag defrags another very specialized file that most defragmenting utilities will not fix: your paging file. Here's what to do:

1. Launch PageDefrag.
2. Browse down the list of files, and look for any one that has more than one fragment.
3. If some of the files have more than one fragment, click on the "Defrag at next boot" radio button. Otherwise, just click the "Cancel" button.
   

The next time your computer restarts, PageDefrag will take a few seconds to defragment those files.

Step 4: JkDefrag


JkDefrag is a general defragmentation utility that I think does a better job at defragmenting hard drives than Microsoft's built-in utility. Using JkDefrag is a one-click process:

1. Launch JkDefrag.exe.

The program will automatically defragment all hard drives. Warning: the first time you run JkDefrag, it's going to take a long time to do its work. We're talking like 2 hours. If, however, you keep in the habit of defragmenting at least once a week, you'll find that the process will take much less than half an hour. To help ensure you keep the defragmenting habit, you can easily use the Windows Scheduled Tasks utility to schedule regular maintenance. You can also use JkDefrag's screensaver mode, to get some defragmenting in every time you step away from the computer for a few minutes.