Rory Buszka
Partition Master
Hi, guys. This thread is for sharing your favorite nifty Windows tips that can improve your user experience. Anyone can share their favorite Windows tips. Tips with screenshots included get extra Niftiness Points (NP).
Nifty Windows Tip #1: Automate the chores
The debate over whether it is best to leave one's computer on 24/7 or shut it off when it's not being used continues to rage on, and the primary argument in favor of leaving the machine on constantly has been the fact that it places less thermal-cycling stress on circuitry and less mechanical stress on things like hard drive motors. However, there's another reason to leave your computer on 24/7 that most might not think about. Even though you need to sleep from time to time, you can still make use of those precious hours of machine time to take care of the mundane drudge-work tasks that help keep your machine operating at its best. Chief among these are scanning for viruses, malware, and adware, and defragmenting your hard drive.
1) Scanning for Viruses
Most virus checking programs offer built-in provisions for scheduling a scan of your entire system for viruses. I recommend doing this once a week if you also use on-access scanning, though a scheduled virus scan every 24 hours could conceivably replace on-access scanning, which is a resource hog, making your system more responsive in normal use. The downside to this is that your virus checker won't catch a new virus until that evening, after it may have had a chance to do some damage. It's still a good idea to leave automatic email-scanning and downloaded file scanning measures in place, as well as adware-blocking measures.
2) Defragmenting your Hard Drive
As your hard drive begins to fill up, your hard drive may not be able to store entire large files in contiguous blocks on your drive's surface, so it breaks them up into fragments, storing a bit here and a piece there, and keeping track of where all the pieces are. The more pieces a file is broken into, the more legwork your hard drive must do to access the data again. The defragmenting process used to be a time-consuming chore that was recommended to be performed every month or so. If the data on your hard drive changed, the defragmentation process would need to start again. While you can't automate this process in Windows' Defrag utility, you can use the MS-DOS command line to make calls to this program.
Getting these command-line calls into the Scheduled Tasks folder is a bit tricky, though. You must first create a *.lnk file to store the command line call which calls this program. Create a new Shortcut file, and open its Properties dialog. In the field labeled Target, enter "defrag c:". Now, whenever you open this shortcut file, the command line window will open, and the defrag task will begin to run. More importantly, however, you can call this shortcut file from within a scheduled task.
All that's left is to create a scheduled task to call the shortcut file you've just created, and schedule it for a time when you aren't likely to be doing anything on your computer during the time it will take for the defragmentation process to complete.
3) Anything Else You Can Do Via Command-Line
Using the technique above, you can run any program that can interpret command line arguments and switches. Now, if only I could cause Windows Media Player to search for media files at a specific time using this technique... if anyone knows a way to do this one, please let me know
Post Script: I don't know if any of these will work in Windows Vista. So don't come tar and feather me if they don't.
Nifty Windows Tip #1: Automate the chores
The debate over whether it is best to leave one's computer on 24/7 or shut it off when it's not being used continues to rage on, and the primary argument in favor of leaving the machine on constantly has been the fact that it places less thermal-cycling stress on circuitry and less mechanical stress on things like hard drive motors. However, there's another reason to leave your computer on 24/7 that most might not think about. Even though you need to sleep from time to time, you can still make use of those precious hours of machine time to take care of the mundane drudge-work tasks that help keep your machine operating at its best. Chief among these are scanning for viruses, malware, and adware, and defragmenting your hard drive.
1) Scanning for Viruses
Most virus checking programs offer built-in provisions for scheduling a scan of your entire system for viruses. I recommend doing this once a week if you also use on-access scanning, though a scheduled virus scan every 24 hours could conceivably replace on-access scanning, which is a resource hog, making your system more responsive in normal use. The downside to this is that your virus checker won't catch a new virus until that evening, after it may have had a chance to do some damage. It's still a good idea to leave automatic email-scanning and downloaded file scanning measures in place, as well as adware-blocking measures.
2) Defragmenting your Hard Drive
As your hard drive begins to fill up, your hard drive may not be able to store entire large files in contiguous blocks on your drive's surface, so it breaks them up into fragments, storing a bit here and a piece there, and keeping track of where all the pieces are. The more pieces a file is broken into, the more legwork your hard drive must do to access the data again. The defragmenting process used to be a time-consuming chore that was recommended to be performed every month or so. If the data on your hard drive changed, the defragmentation process would need to start again. While you can't automate this process in Windows' Defrag utility, you can use the MS-DOS command line to make calls to this program.
Getting these command-line calls into the Scheduled Tasks folder is a bit tricky, though. You must first create a *.lnk file to store the command line call which calls this program. Create a new Shortcut file, and open its Properties dialog. In the field labeled Target, enter "defrag c:". Now, whenever you open this shortcut file, the command line window will open, and the defrag task will begin to run. More importantly, however, you can call this shortcut file from within a scheduled task.
All that's left is to create a scheduled task to call the shortcut file you've just created, and schedule it for a time when you aren't likely to be doing anything on your computer during the time it will take for the defragmentation process to complete.
3) Anything Else You Can Do Via Command-Line
Using the technique above, you can run any program that can interpret command line arguments and switches. Now, if only I could cause Windows Media Player to search for media files at a specific time using this technique... if anyone knows a way to do this one, please let me know
Post Script: I don't know if any of these will work in Windows Vista. So don't come tar and feather me if they don't.
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