In this step, we will use Windows’ built in Disk Defragmentation utility. There are many other, better defrag applications out there (personally, I use Diskeeper. It has it’s own scheduler), but this one is free and we wouldn’t have to waste time and space installing a third-party application.
Table Of Contents
This is the Third Step in the Fresh Computer Series.
Schedule The Task
- Navigate to: Control Panel -> Scheduled Tasks -> Add Scheduled Task
(Alternately, you run this from the Run dialog: control schedtasks)
- Hit Next in the dialog box that opens.
- In the Scheduled Task Wizard, put this in the address bar [1]:
%SystemRoot%\system32\defrag.exe
- Click Next. You could set this to run Daily but that’s not really necessary. We’ll set the defrag time to Weekly.
- Click Next. Enter the time and date for the task. Set the Start time for 4:30 AM every 1 weeks, select the day of the week as Monday.
- In the next screen, enter in the username and the password for your Windows user account [2].
- Tick the “Open advanced properties for this task when I click Finish.” checkbox and click the Finish button.
- In the advanced settings, look for the Run text field. We need to add a space, then the drive letter of the drive we want to defragmant, to the end of the path:
c:\windows\system32\defrag.exe C:
- Click the Set password… button (right of the Run as textbox with your username) and add your Windows password [3]
- Click OK in all dialogs.
Next, we can proceed to Fresh Computer Series Step Four: Automate A Reboot.
[1] I had you use the %systemroot% variable just in case you’ve installed Windows in a location other then the default 
The actual location for the Disk Defragmenter should be:
C:\WINDOWS\system32\defrag.exe
[2] This user needs to be a System Administrator.
[3]Even though you put in your password in the sixth step, you have to type it again.
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