It is very common and common a system will become slower and slower after some time. Some people have a practice to format their pc after some period, but this is not a good solution because whenever you format it, you need to redo all the application installation, all the customized settings and even recover some data. The right answer to keep your system performance should be periodic system maintenance and not periodicly format your system.

System maintenance can be heavy job if you will need to perform it manually, because you will need to trigger the job manually and wait for its completion. Most of the time, people tends to forget this manual and boring task to keep system performance.Hence, why don't we automate system maintenance and let the system maintain itself?

In Window XP,there are 3 system maintenance tasks that need to perform - Disk Cleanup, Check Disk and Disk Defragment.

Disk Cleanup

The command to perform disk cleanup is Cleanmgr.exe.Cleanmgr.exe is used to clear unnecessary files from your computer's hard disk.The files that are able to clear are as following:

• Temporary Setup Files
• Downloaded Program Files
• Temporary Internet Files
• Old Chkdsk Files
• Recycle Bin
• Temporary Files
• Temporary Offline Files
• Offline Files
• Compress Old Files
• Catalog Files for the Content Indexer

For detail usage of cleanmgr.exe, please refer How to Automate the Disk Cleanup Tool in Windows XP in Microsoft.

To automate disk cleanup in your system,follow the below steps:

Open Run dialogue in Start -> Run Key in cmd or command in Run dialogue to open command prompt. In command prompt, key in " cleanmgr.exe /sageset:1000 " to set your disk cleanup profile. Disk Cleanup Settings as in Figure 1 will prompt up. Check the check box for those files that you want disk cleanup profile to clear. After setting up the disk cleanup profile, whenever you need to run disk cleanup, just key in " cleanmgr.exe /sagerun:1000 " in command prompt. When you key in the above command, disk cleanup will perform clean up on every disk on your system based on the disk cleanup that you set previously. You also can write the command in a batch file and use Window Scheduler to trigger it.For detail putting it in a batch file.Please refer another section in this page.

Figure 1

Check Disk Utility

Check Disk Utility is an embeded tool in Window XP to help detect file system corruption as well as bad sector.For normal non-system disk, Check Disk can run in Window mode, but for system disk that stored Windows, it will only be able to run after restart before the window was launched. Hence, sometime, you will need to initialize shutdown command so that your system will be restart automatically to perform check disk in system disk.

For detail explanation of command for check disk, please refer Chkdsk from micosoft

To run chkdsk in command prompt, follow the below sterps.

1. Open Run dialogue in Start -> Run
2. Key in cmd or command in Run dialogue to open command prompt.
3. In command prompt, key in "chkdsk /F volume:".
4. Most of the time, we might miss out the check disk result.Hence, we can add another command to save the result in a text file.
5. For examples, if you want to chkdsk your E drive. You can key in " chkdsk /F E: >> c:\scandisk.log " in command prompt.In this case, chkdsk will create a scandisk.log in c drive.
6. To scan system drive that stored Window,you will need to add another shutdown command by key in " shutdown -r ".

Disk Defragmenter

Disk Defragmenter is the tool in Window XP that can locates and consolidates fragmented boot files, data files, and folders on local volumes. This process is the key point to make your system maintain at the speed near to the speed you just build up the system.

For details usage of defrag command, please refer Defrag in Microsoft

To execute disk defragmenter in command prompt, you can follow the following steps.

1. Open Run dialogue in Start -> Run
2. Key in cmd or command in Run dialogue to open command prompt.
3. In command prompt, key in "defrag /f volume:".Volume mean the drive that you want defragment to be happened.For examples, if you want to defrag E drive, the command will be like "degrag /f E:"
4. Same case with check disk, most of the time we will miss out the defragment report.You can use the same matter to log the report in a text file.
5. For examples, if you want to defrag your E drive. You can key in " defrag -f E: >> c:\defrag.log " in command prompt.In this case, defragment report will save in defrag.log in c drive.

Automate All Together - Complete System Maintenance Solution

The ideal sequence of running those maintenance tools is to run Disk Cleanup to clear the unnecessary space in the disk first, then run check disk utility to fix any file system error ,and lastly execute disk defragmenter to consolidates fragmented boot files, data files, and folders on local volumes.Check Disk on system drive will need to reboot. Hence, the sequence to automate full maintenance should be as following.

1. Run disk cleanup for all the drive.
2. Run check disk for all the non-system drive.
3. Run defragmenter for all the drive.
4. Run check disk for system drive.

Siamkia.com provides a sample script that automate check disk, disk cleanup, and disk defragmentation together. Users can download it from Download Center and edit the script to fix your system volume.You can get the script for free at here.

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