Windows XP is a very user-friendly operating system. However, it can be difficult to defragment your system files (pagefile and registry) if you are not familiar with the process. This article will teach you how to defragment your system files in Windows XP.

  1. Open the Start menu and type “defragment” into the search bar.
  2. When the Defragmenting Your System Files window opens, click on the “Defragment Now” button to start the defragmentation process.
  3. The defragmentation process will take some time, so be patient and allow it to finish automatically. Once it has finished, your system files will be much easier to manage and access.

There’s a utility called PageDefrag from Sysinternals (Microsoft) that lets you do one single task, and it does it well. It runs as a boot-time process that defragments the system files before they are locked by XP.

Thanks to Reader Shawn for suggesting this as a topic.

Defragment Your System Files

When you open up the application, you’ll see a list of the system files and the number of fragments each file is in. Select the “Defragment at next boot” option, or you could even choose to defragment at every boot, although I wouldn’t necessarily recommend that.

When you reboot, you’ll be prompted by PageDefrag to hit a key if you don’t want to defragment now.

If you didn’t abort the defrag, you’ll now see the defragment in process. As you can see, mine didn’t need to be defragmented anyway…

If you selected the option to defragment on every boot but would like to remove it, you can open up the application and select “Don’t defragment (uninstall)”, and then click the OK button.

This should be an essential utility in any geek’s toolkit. Note that this isn’t a substitute for defragmenting your other files on a regular basis.

Download PageDefrag from Majorgeeks.com