Defragmenting your hard drive is something probably even the most wide-eyed newbie has at least heard of. There are many utilities out there that do the same job. Even current versions of Windows supply a decent defragmentation utility. What the Windows versions don't do is move the swap file or at least disable it so it's out of the way during defragmenting. Before running its own defragmantation process, Windows also won't close open files or shut down any of the junk running in your system tray.

There are some commercial utilities which will close system tray programs and move the swap files. One that most folks will recognize is Symantec's Norton Speed Disk. I've used Speed Disk from time to time and it always does a reasonable job. I don't have Speed Disk installed currently as it's bundled with the Norton Utilities suite and since I never use any of the other utilities in the suite, well, that's another story.

Defragmenter Pro is an attempt to provide a utility that gets around the swap file by performing the defragmentation after first disabling the swap file and then rebooting. It then runs Window's defragmentation utility on the drives you specify. The program is run from a standard Windows dialog box and the choices are fairly simple. You can choose which drives to defragment and whether to shut-down or reboot Windows once the deed is done.

Once you click OK, the utility shuts down Windows, disables the swap file and reboots. On startup, the utility triggers Windows Scandisk and Windows Defrag before any of the programs you normally use have a chance to start up. Once the scanning and defragmentation process is done, Defragmenter Pro re-enables your swap file and reboots or shuts down, depending on your previous choice.