wrote:
According to David I shouldn't be using either Ccleaner
or Defraggler but just stick with what the computer came
with but I don't even know what that's called, whether its
automatic or where it's located?

Robert

"How to Use Windows 7 Disk Defragmenter"

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials...-open-use.html

"Open the Start Menu, and double click on to expand All Programs,
Accessories, System Tools, and click on Disk Defragmenter."

If you leave the computer running regularly, into the wee hours
when Windows has "maintenance" activity scheduled, it can do
things like defragmentation on its own. That's what the "scheduled"
part of this dialog is for. On my Windows 7 machine, it would
not normally be running at 3 A.M., so I miss that maintenance
window.

But if you just want to run the thing manually, there are buttons
at the bottom.

http://www.sevenforums.com/attachmen...-use-step2.jpg

The method used, is entirely unique in terms of experience. Gone
is the nice display with a graphical representation of files
that are fragmented or not. The reason for that, is because the
tool will not defragment files larger than 50MB, the display would
look "ugly" when it was finished. To hide the ugliness, there is
no display.

There is a status that shows "passes", that seems to go on forever.
It might seem a bit more efficient than what you're used to.

The purpose of only defragmenting small files, is based on
measurements of what is and what is not important to performance.
So the built-in defragmenter is not the usual kind of "polishing"
application. It doesn't seek visual perfection in terms of where
the red, green, blue bars or blocks would normally be located.
It seeks instead, to tidy up the parts of the disk that are
important to tidy up. And nothing more. Because it doesn't
defragment everything, it ends up being faster than
traditional tools. Whereas I've had the WinXP defragmenter take more
than eight hours to run on a volume, a more usual time for
the Windows 7 one might be ten minutes.

The philosophy on CHKDSK is a bit different too. And the documentation
on that is hard to find. There is a claim that data structures in the
file system, are checked while the system is running, meaning that
fewer latent errors should accumulate in the NTFS file systems. You
can still run CHKDSK manually if you want, for reassurance. And
the new CHKDSK has a bad habit - it will eat all the RAM on the machine.
If you have an 8GB memory on the computer, the new CHKDSK (64 bit version),
will eat around 7GB of it. The way to stop that, is to obtain a 32 bit
copy of CHKDSK and run that instead, as that cannot (by design) gobble
more than 2GB of memory. Now, if I hadn't mentioned that, you might not
have even noticed, but I think it's important to understand that flaw is
present in it. People who have tried to CHKDSK four partitions
at the same time, found their machine became almost non-responsive,
due to the appetite the CHKDSK program has. The older versions of
CHDDSK, were not as presumptuous as this. They had a smaller
appetite.

One way to get the 32 bit CHKDSK, is to look on a 32 bit installer DVD.
I keep both 32 bit and 64 bit DVD images of Win7 and Win8 here, for
precisely this reason. Any time I need a particular "flavor" of executable,
I have it on hand. Since I don't do a lot of CHKDSK though, this isn't
a priority with me - at the time the issue was raised, I tested it and
was satisfied with my workaround (2GB limitation by using the 32 bit
version). The need hasn't arisen on Windows 8 yet, for me to test it.
Who knows, maybe the designers at Redmond, had a change of heart.

HTH,
Paul