anyone know how to disable the automatic defrag in xp?

[RayEarth]

I noticed that winxp auto defrags itself when there's no system activity. Is there anyway to disable this? I already used norton speed disk and when I did the disk defragmenter analyze it said the HDD doesn't need to be defragmented, but I noticed a program called dfrgfat.exe runs by itself, how can I removed or permantly disable this from running?

 

[bsobel]

It's not doing a full defrag, it's repositioning application files for faster access. You probably want to leave it on.
Bill

 

[RayEarth]

alright

 

[corkyg]

If you want it off, it is in Task Scheduler. I never use Windows defrag, auto or otherwise. It's a matter of choice.

 

[bsobel]

Originally posted by: corky-g
If you want it off, it is in Task Scheduler. I never use Windows defrag, auto or otherwise. It's a matter of choice.

Corky, where in task scheduler do you think you see this? We are not talking about windows defrag persay, but a automatic system performance enhancment the OS does while idle.

Bill

 

[RalfHutter]

There's two ways that I know about to shut this off.

First of all, it's called "prefetch". It optimizes the placement of the files that Windows needs to boot your computer. It also optimizes the placement of the files that you need to startup your most frequently used apps. Read this MS page about this for more understanding. Download and read the "whitepaper". It's very interesting reading. The Windows XP Performance Guide is another very good article to read.

Anyway, if you read the info you know that it only runs once every 3 days during "idle time". It doesn't take long to do because it's not moving around many files.

If you still want to shut it off you can do one of two things. Either disable the Task Scheduler Service or edit the registry. There's a string in the registry that needs to be edited to stop the prefetcher from running. Go to this page and go to the "P" section and scroll down to the "prefetch" section. It tells you which key to edit to turn this off, plus it has lots of info about prefetch in general.

I'd recommend that you just leave it on. On my box it takes about 5 minutes at most to run and it only runs if you're not using your computer.

 

[RayEarth]

thanks ralf, great info.