How often should we defrag our computers?

That would depend on how often you add and remove things to your hard disk. For frequent users, once a month should generally be enough. For me, once a year would suffice lol. I would suggest you download and install this small, free and good program (better than Window's in-built one) Auslogic Disk Defrag at http://www.auslogics.com/disk-defrag . It takes but a few min instead of hours to defrag even a big harddisk. And no, I don't think you should defrag and scan at the same time. Generally, do it separately. Do nothing while you are defragmenting. Run it while you are not needing your computer perhaps.

Hey madmommy! I do mine every 3 month just to be sure. No you cannot defrag and scan for viruses at same time. But if you defrag you should get rid of most viruses anyway so a virus scan would not be necessary. :)

defrag increase your hard disk speed, its defrag you files, so its depend upon how much you made change in file in your hard disk, basically you should do it once in a week

Actually, I go to check to see if my computer needs to be defraged every once in a while. The last time I attempted to do it, me computer let me know that it did not need to be done. I have my computer automatically set to check for viruses every day. I have never tried to defrag and scan for viruses at the same time. You may also need to do a disk clean up to free up disk space. This wil help your computer to run faster.

I defrag when the computer is going slow or when the disk space is running low. However, if the disk space is running too low, there is issue doing defrag. I would then forget it. As for virus scan, I do it daily and the virus scanner has fully autonomy of the computer. It is simply too slow when the scanner is working. And no, I do not suggest doing a virus scan with defrag.

try defragging your laptop atleast once a month. but defragging usually takes a lot of time to get done. so keep it for defragging when you have minimum work with your laptop or computer. and dont try to run any other prog while defragging as it slows the defrag down and it will take much more time. there are many other softwares awailable which give quick defrag and all. try and find one such software. for tips to maintain your comp visit http://thepcshack.blogspot.com/

I usually defrag my computer once in awhile just to keep it up and going. I like to make sure my machine is running properly and effectively.

If you are forever adding programs and deleting them... you should defragment your operating system often as you are messing it up. As a general rule... for optimum performance... you should defragment your computer each time you install a new program. But few people do that. You should not run any program while defragmenting... not even a screensaver. In the old days... the defragmenting would stop as soon as the screen saver came on. The reason for this is that you cannot defragment files which are in use. One of the major cause for computer slowing down is "spyware". And if you are downloading games... you probably got lots of it. You should download and install the free "Spybot" on your computer. This will remove all spyware and prevent new spyware getting on it.

Hello maddy. This is one reason why I refused to keep downloading any programs on my computer. I recently added 5 new extensions from the Mozilla group and my computer had slowed down. I have no idea which features are the culprit so I needed to uninstall everything again. I'm using antivirus and anti-spyware from the Zone Alarm and they work well with my windows vista. I'm also using GCleaner which is recommended by my best friend here. Sorry though that I can't be much help here. I'm not a computer guru, LOL.

Hello there Maddysmom! I actually defragmenter my computer only once a month, I too download a lot and erase. It is good to defragment the computer and do the anti virus scan but it is also important to do a registry scan because most programs leave things in your registry which could affect the speed of your computer. I am using a free recommended by Microsoft registry cleaner called Cclean, it is great you can’t imagine how many errors I had when I did the scan! I believe if I would have printed it out it would be at least three pages long….lol.. It is great software and it also cleans out the compressed internet files that your computer leaves behind. I hope this info helps you:)

When you defrag your computer, you are not expected to do anything else with the computer. In fact, the computer should not have stuff like screen savers or other stuff running in the background because the defrag may never finish. So you quit all programs before you start to defrag. You should do it often especially when you delete a lot of stuff from your computer. But you can save some time by doing the "analyze" first to see if you really need to dfragment at that particular time or not. Also, you need at least 15% of your hard disk to be free to be able to defragment.

I defrag my computer once in a week. Just to make sure the computer runs smoothly.. I have 100GB worth of file in my hard disk. So i really need to make running it smoothly as possible.. I wouldn't recommend doing the defrag and scan for viruses at the same time. This is because the defrag it self consumes a lot of cpu resources. The scanning also consumes a lot of resources. I don't really know what the risks are but I would preferably not do those things simultanously P.S: Its just like burning a disc. You don't interrupt the burning so that it would run smoothly right?