Uncover The Real Power Of XP's Maintenance Tools

[Big Booger]

1) Uncover The Real Power Of XP's Maintenance Tools

Windows XP has gussied up some of its built-in maintenance tools, but
in
doing so, has actually hidden some of their power. For example, take
Defrag. The normal, manual way to run Defrag is to click to
Start/Control Panel/Performance and then select "Rearrange items on
your
hard disk to make programs run faster." All those clicks, and all that
verbiage, simply starts the Defrag.Exe program (usually located in the
Windows\System32 folder). When you run Defrag this way, it comes up
with
a graphical front end that requires still more pointing and clicking to
make anything actually happen. So, this approach is useless for
automated defrags when no one will be there to point and click as
needed.

And that really *is* the way Microsoft steers you to use tools like
Defrag. For example, if you search for "Defrag" in XP's help file, the
primary search results ("Using Disk Defragmenter" and "Disk
Defragmenter") offer links to the graphical, manual--- and limited---
version of Defrag.

But Defrag actually can run *better* with no graphical front end at all
and that's the key to using it (and other, similar system tools) in a
far more powerful and fully automated fashion.
That's the topic of the full-length feature article at
http://www.informationweek.com/story...cleID=15600170
:
We'll start with the basics to make sure those new to Windows and XP
are on board. But we'll end with some advanced ideas that can let your
PC perform multiple automated unattended maintenance tasks of arbitrary
complexity, and in whatever sequence you choose--- and all for free,
using only the tools built into XP!

For example, if you want to have your PC automatically wake itself up
every night at 3AM, clean up your hard drive, backup all your files,
defrag every disk or partition in your system, and then go back to
sleep-
-- no problem! In fact, it's easy, once you know how.

Let me show you how simple it can be, using Defrag as the working
example. Just click on over to the free article at
http://www.informationweek.com/story...cleID=15600170
for the full scoop. See you there!