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Ask the Doctor

Defragging in Vista

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Ask the Doctor LogoIn your “Better, Faster, Stronger” article (July 2009), one of the tricks you recommend is to defrag my computer. I have Vista and I am trying to do a full defrag through the command line. It will not allow it without an “administrator command prompt.” What is an administrator command prompt? I am the only user and my account is an administrator account. Any advice?

—Jed Carter
 

Jed, for security reasons, Vista’s User Account Control won’t run programs with administrator permissions by default, even if you’re the only user. To run an administrator command prompt, use the search bar in the Start menu and search for cmd.exe. When it shows up, right-click it and select “Run as administrator.” Alternately, you can just search for cmd.exe and hit Ctrl-Shift-Enter to open an administrator command prompt.


Right-click cmd.exe and select "Run as administrator" to open an administrator command prompt.

 

SUBMIT YOUR QUESTION Are flames shooting out of the back of your rig? First, grab a fire extinguisher and douse the flames. Once the pyrotechnic display has fizzled, email the doctor at doctor@maximumpc.com for advice on how to solve your technological woes.

 

COMMENTS
avatarvista defrag

Even the CLI defrag operation is not much different from the GUI driven one. The defrag is still slow (takes hours and hours) and all files especially system files are not fully defragged. Back when I had Vista, Diskeeper 2008/2009 was the defragger I used; way better than Vista's defragger - much faster and defragged all the files including the system files.

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