What does it mean that my disk is heavily defragmented?

• When files are stored on your hard drive often the file is separated (example: FILE1FILE2FILE1) or there is unnecessary space in between the files so the computer requires more time to find the specific files.

Benefits of running the Disk Defragmenter:

• First and foremost, defragmenting your hard drive will result in faster load times and faster performance (not greatly, but small improvements).

• Because the files are sorted, the hard drive doesn’t have to work as hard to read all the necessary files. This protects the hard drive from potentially overworking itself and doing serious damage to your machine.
• Believe it or not, you may find that after defragmenting your machine that you have more room on your hard drive than your computer originally thought.

How do I run the Disk Defragmenter?

• Select “Start” or the “Windows Logo” in bottom left
• Go to “All Programs”
• Go to “Accessories”
• Go to “System Tools”
• Click on “Disk Defragmenter“ (See below)
• Select your hard drive (Usually C:)
• Select “Defragment”

Conclusion:

• This process isn’t going to provide great noticeable speed improvements, but will slightly increase file access speed and overall increased performance.

Personally I prefer the new Layout over the Windows XP look, but some people prefer using what they are familiar with.

This is what the taskbar (bottom bar with the start menu and open applications) looks like in Windows 7.

Changing the Windows 7 Taskbar to XP/Vista Style

To revert back to the older style, the first thing you’ll need to do is right-click on any open area of the taskbar and choose Properties from the menu.

From the Taskbar buttons drop-down menu, you’ll want to choose “Never combine”, which will make every window show up as a separate button on the taskbar, or you could choose “Combine when taskbar is full”, which does just like it says.

Now you should see the buttons show up with text labels like you are probably used to… but in the Windows 7 style.

If you chose the “Use small icons” checkbox in the properties screen, the taskbar will actually shrink down to look very similar to Vista.

The only problem is that the “pinned” icons are still sitting on the taskbar, which isn’t the same as Vista or XP, but you can easily remove all of them by right-clicking and choosing “Unpin this program from taskbar”.

And now the taskbar looks and works very similarly to Windows Vista:

If you wanted to make it look like Windows XP, and replace the “Windows Orb” with the traditional “Start” button, you can choose the “Windows Classic” theme under the Desktop \ Personalize section.

Pictured above is the “Windows Classic” theme selected with the other changes mentioned above.  Look familiar?

Well with Windows 7, it is very easy to transfer your output to either duplicate your screen, extend your screen (so that you can have two different desktops), or turn off multi-monitor display.

1. Press and hold the key and press “P” and you will see the below image.

2. While holding the key press “P” each time it will change the options for outputting display.

3. If you want to turn off the multimonitor display just press and “P” until the farthest left option is selected and the picture will return to just your main computer.

Try it out… play with it… this is a very convenient way to hook your PC to your TV or external Monitor for multi-tasking.

If you drag a program to the top of the screen it will re-size “full screen”, left/right it will size to half the screen so you can have two programs open side by side.

But what you might not of known is that you can use the  + Arrow Keys to switch “Full Screen (up arrow)”, “Minimize (down arrow)”, 50% left (left arrow), and 50% (right arrow).

I hope that makes it easier for you to use and keep an eye out for more to come!

Windows 7 Resize Tool