Yet Another Defrag Utility!

Here at Bauer-Power we believe in keeping machines running at peak performance. At the forefront of peak performance, in Windows anyway, is keeping your hard drive defragmented. Think about a fragmented hard drive like your desk at work. When everything is nice, neat, and in the right place it is easy to find what you are looking for right? When your desk is messy, with random junk scattered around it makes things harder to find.

The same goes with hard drives. When your hard drive is heavily fragmented, it is like that messy desk. It takes a few extra seconds to find all of the missing parts to each file you want to work with. When everything is nicely defragmented. Everything is put away in nice orderly blocks, and it takes less time to find everything the computer needs to run.

We have recommended a few defraggers in the past. Namely Dirms, JKDefrag, and Defraggler. So what's one more right? I heard about this new one on Tekzilla. It is called Smart Defrag. Here is a brief description from IObit, the makers of Smart Defrag:

Disk fragmentation is generally main cause of slow and unstable computer performance. Smart Defrag helps defragment your hard drive most efficiently. Smart Defrag not only defragments computer deeply but optimizes disk performance. With 'install it and forget it' feature, Smart Defrag works automatically and quietly in the background on your PC, keeping your hard disk running at its speediest. Smart Defrag is completely free for home, organization, and business.

Smart Defrag works on all versions of Windows including all server editions. This is good news, because keeping your servers running smoothly is just as, if not more important than keeping your workstations running smoothly. Also, server disk defragmenters can be expensive. Why not save a few extra bucks with this and put it to better use.... like upgrading RAM ;-P

What defragmenters do you use? Do you tend to stick to the built in defrag utility? Would you trust a free defrag utility on production servers? Why or why not? Let me know in the comments.

Technorati Tags: defrag, scheduled, free, server, windows, smart

Read more »

Download The Bauer-Power Security Pack

Many moons ago, like most guys in the biz, I used to do my own Geek Squad style home computer repair/consulting gig. It was a pretty sweet racket. So many home users trashing their computers, so little time! I was making money hand over fist advertising on Craig's List, and doing spyware cleanups in the evening.

One of my little marketing ploys was to hand out a CD of free software to all of my clients, and I called it the "Bauer-Power Consultation Security Pack!"

Good idea right?

Well, tonight after spending the last three or four hours assisting my two neighbors with their various computer issues, I got to thinking about that CD, so I decided to download some cool and most importantly Free security and performance software, and stick them on a CD to give a kick ass update to the old idea!

My CD includes:

• AVG Anti-virus - Free Antivirus
• Malwarebytes Anti-Malware - Anti-Malware to clean up
• Spybot S&D - Anti-Spyware cleaner
• Zone Alarm - Firewall
• Defraggler - Disk Defragmenter
• Truecrypt - File and Disk Encryption
• Eraser - Secure File Destruction
• Recuva - File Recovery
  

To make it easy to share my CD with all of my friends, family and of course you guys out there in cyberspace, I have saved my Bauer-Power Security Pack CD to an ISO and made it available for you to download here: (Bauer-Power Security Pack)

Feel free to download it, burn it to a CD, and hand it out any time someone tells you that they have a virus, or they mention that they have let their anti-virus lapse, or need to securely erase porn... You get the idea.

If you don't want to take the time to burn them a CD yourself, feel free to send them the link to this post so they can download and burn it themselves!

Read more »

Top 10 Tech Tools to Bring to Thanksgiving Dinner

I was reading a post on Lifehacker about how if you are in the tech field, or are just the "computer geek" of the family that you will most likely be sucked into fixing your family members computer. It happens to me not just at Thanksgiving, but pretty much any time I go to one of my relatives' houses.

Honestly, it doesn't really bother me too badly. I actually love this stuff. When I come across a computer infected with some nasty viruses I sort of feel like Keanu Reeves in the movie Constantine.

With that in mind, here is my list of essential cleanup and optimization tools you can use to fix the in-laws computers this Thanksgiving.

Spybot Search & Destroy - I have written about this one before. It is great, and the latest version has many added security features to help "immunize" your in-laws computers and keep them safe.

Avast! Antivirus - My all time personal favorite. If there is a virus, this sucker will catch it and eliminate it.

Comodo Internet Security - I have been using this for quite a while now, and I love it. It just works. Simple as that.

Firefox - Lets face it, Internet Exploder just isn't that secure. Firefox is simply a better internet browser for security.

CCleaner - CCleaner is sort of like the built in Windows disk clean up utility...On steroids. Besides cleaning up the junk on your computer, it also has a really great registry cleaner too among other things.

Spyware Blaster - This one is good because it pro actively works to keep spyware from being installed in the first place.

JKDefrag - I particularly like this one, because it comes with a screen saver feature which is great because your in laws never have to think about defragging. Whenever they step away from the computer and the screen saver comes on the defrag process will begin.

Here are some alternatives to some of the above, if you don't like those ones:

AVG Free Antivirus - Often rated as the number one free antivirus available

Zone Alarm Firewall - Another good free firewall solution with proven protection.

Windows Defender - Some have mixed feeling on this one, but for the most part it is pretty good. I do like that it has automatic update features, so you can set it and forget it.

Once your in-laws computers are cleaned up, defragged, and virus free, don't forget to install all of the latest patches and service packs, and turn on their automatic updates.

If everything goes well, their computers should stay running smoothly. That is until the next time you visit.

Read more »

Scripting a Defrag

Anybody who is anybody knows that the built in Windows defrag utility stinks. It is very hard to schedule defrag and have it work correctly. The problem with that is that if you don't automate it, it will likely never get done, then you will start to see a lag in performance.

For those of you not "in the know", the reason defragging your hard drive is a good idea is because of the way Windows writes data to the hard drive. Windows doesn't write your word document in one continuous chunk on the hard drive. It breaks it up and puts the pieces where there is open space all over your drive. Over time, these fragments get out of control, and it takes the computer longer to find all of the pieces. It's kind of like your desk at work, with all sorts of papers strewn about. The defrag utility moves all of the pieces so they are back together again.

Now back to automation. There are lots of third part utilities out there for scheduling a defrag, and most of them cost money. The one I am going to talk about is a command line utility called DIRMS. Now, like some freeware products, DIRMS is no longer free, and comes only as trial ware. Once again, Bauer-Power to the rescue! I have the old free version available HERE. I have also included the script I wrote that will let you execute it without having to know much about running things from the command line. Just save it to the root of your C: drive (If you have a different letter, edit the batch file using notepad to use that letter).

The coolest part, is that since it is so easy to write a batch script for running it, it is even easier to automate. You can set the batch script to run as a scheduled task in windows. If you don't already know how to do that, click on Start> All Programs> Accessories> system Tools> Scheduled Tasks> Click on the Add Scheduled Task icon and follow the wizard. When it prompts you for which file to run, browse to the batch file, select it, and click OK.

I use it all the time, and it works great. I recommend setting it for a time when you aren't going to be using the computer, like sometime between midnight and when you wakeup (Yes, your computer has to be on to run it! I don't know how many times I have had users ask me if it okay to turn their computers off when they go home when I have set something to run after they leave. If you turn off your computer the scheduled task will not run. Simple as that!)

Once again, you can download it HERE.

Read more »