Defrag.exe

Scannerman · Apr 22, 2025

All this defrag talk is scaring me. How do you know that by enabling defrag it won't start defragging your SSDs? I had that happen once years ago by accident and it isn't pretty.

pseymour · Apr 22, 2025

Windows does defrag an SSD, sometimes, under certain circumstances.

The real and complete story - Does Windows defragment your SSD?

There has been a LOT of confusion around Windows, SSDs (hard drives), and ...

www.hanselman.com

CountMike · Apr 22, 2025

Bree said:
Have you tried clicking Start and typing 'defrag'?

That's the command line one. The GUI version is C:\WINDOWS\system32\dfrgui.exe

Ah, right, dfrgui.exe it is, Tnx, I made a desktop shortcut to it for now.

Kennabytes · Apr 22, 2025

Defragmenting a SSD a few times shouldn't cause an issue. Trim and defrag are very different processes.

CountMike · Apr 22, 2025

Kennabytes said:
Defragmenting a SSD a few times shouldn't cause an issue. Trim and defrag are very different processes.

Yes, definitely, SSDs don't need classic defrag like HHDs, data isn't in same continuous place/tracks. It may not hurt an SSD other than to cause some unnecessary writes.

Scannerman · Apr 22, 2025

pseymour said:
Windows does defrag an SSD, sometimes, under certain circumstances.

The real and complete story - Does Windows defragment your SSD?

There has been a LOT of confusion around Windows, SSDs (hard drives), and ...

www.hanselman.com

Thanks for sharing, Pseymour. I guess this old man still has a lot to learn.

Scannerman · Apr 22, 2025

CountMike said:
Yes, definitely, SSDs don't need classic defrag like HHDs, data isn't in same continuous place/tracks. It may not hurt an SSD other than to cause some unnecessary writes.

Well, the classic defrag killed my old OCZ SSD. Totally bricked it. So now I'm a bit paranoid about defragging SSDs. Mind, that was over a decade ago.

abactuon · Apr 22, 2025

The following files are required for the program to work

"C:\Windows\SystemResources\dfrgui.exe.mun"
"C:\Windows\System32\en-US\Defrag.exe.mui"
"C:\Windows\System32\en-US\DfrgUI.exe.mui"
"C:\Windows\System32\en-US\defragsvc.dll.mui"
"C:\Windows\System32\Defrag.exe"
"C:\Windows\System32\dfrgui.exe"
"C:\Windows\System32\defragproxy.dll"
"C:\Windows\System32\defragres.dll"
"C:\Windows\System32\defragsvc.dll"

You can copy them to any location (\SystemResources should be a level above).

gunrunnerjohn · Apr 22, 2025

pseymour said:
Windows does defrag an SSD, sometimes, under certain circumstances.

The real and complete story - Does Windows defragment your SSD?

There has been a LOT of confusion around Windows, SSDs (hard drives), and ...

www.hanselman.com

Excellent information, learned something new today!

I did not know that a defrag made sense on an SSD, but I see there is value in certain circumstances.

IanMosley · Apr 22, 2025

I use this, under Powershell (Admin), to defrag / trim my SSDs

Optimize-Volume -DriveLetter [drive letter] -Verbose

e.g.

Optimize-Volume -DriveLetter C -Verbose

gunrunnerjohn · Apr 22, 2025

IanMosley said:
I use this, under Powershell (Admin), to defrag / trim my SSDs

Optimize-Volume -DriveLetter [drive letter] -Verbose

e.g.

Optimize-Volume -DriveLetter C -Verbose

Given the previous linked article, I think I'll just let Windows handle the defrag.

I have no reason to think I'm better at determining when it might be required.

CountMike · Apr 22, 2025

abactuon said:
The following files are required for the program to work

"C:\Windows\SystemResources\dfrgui.exe.mun"
"C:\Windows\System32\en-US\Defrag.exe.mui"
"C:\Windows\System32\en-US\DfrgUI.exe.mui"
"C:\Windows\System32\en-US\defragsvc.dll.mui"
"C:\Windows\System32\Defrag.exe"
"C:\Windows\System32\dfrgui.exe"
"C:\Windows\System32\defragproxy.dll"
"C:\Windows\System32\defragres.dll"
"C:\Windows\System32\defragsvc.dll"

You can copy them to any location (\SystemResources should be a level above).

View attachment 131914

I got it working but not from Disk properties as it was normally working from.

gunrunnerjohn said:
Given the previous linked article, I think I'll just let Windows handle the defrag. I have no reason to think I'm better at determining when it might be required.

hdmi · Apr 24, 2025

CountMike said:
Ah, right, dfrgui.exe it is, Tnx, I made a desktop shortcut to it for now.

Press Win to open Start, a blinking text cursor normally appears in the Search field.
Type in the first few letters of what you're looking for. On my system, simply typing in the letter d is already enough to make Defragment and Optimize Drives show up under Best match. Defragment and Optimize Drives is actually the name of a desktop shortcut that lives under Windows Tools (and points to "C:\Windows\System32\dfrgui.exe").
Press Enter to Open/Run the item that is shown under Best match.
Enjoy letting it optimize all memory cells!

CountMike · Apr 24, 2025

hdmi said:
Press Win to open Start, a blinking text cursor normally appears in the Search field.

Type in the first few letters of what you're looking for. On my system, simply typing in the letter d is already enough to make Defragment and Optimize Drives show up under Best match. Defragment and Optimize Drives is actually the name of a desktop shortcut that lives under Windows Tools (and points to "C:\Windows\System32\dfrgui.exe").

Press Enter to Open/Run the item that is shown under Best match.

Enjoy letting it optimize all memory cells!

Tnx I can start it from desktop icon but not from disk properties as usual.

hdmi · Apr 24, 2025

CountMike said:
Tnx I can start it from desktop icon but not from disk properties as usual.

Do you mean that the Optimize button refuses to work? Or just the Tools tab is missing from Drive Properties?

Remove General, Tools, Hardware tabs in Drive Properties in Windows 10

How to Add or Remove Hardware tab in Drive Properties in Windows 10 You can right click or press and hold on a drive in Windows, and click/tap on Properties to see more details about the drive's properties. The Hardware tab in the properties page window o

www.tenforums.com

CountMike · Apr 24, 2025

hdmi said:
Do you mean that the Optimize button refuses to work? Or just the Tools tab is missing from Drive Properties?

Remove General, Tools, Hardware tabs in Drive Properties in Windows 10

How to Add or Remove Hardware tab in Drive Properties in Windows 10 You can right click or press and hold on a drive in Windows, and click/tap on Properties to see more details about the drive's properties. The Hardware tab in the properties page window o

www.tenforums.com

Just optimize doesn't work

PS. it's not in Remove Programs.
PSS. That works fine in Insider Beta on same PC.

hdmi · Apr 24, 2025

CountMike said:
Just optimize doesn't work
View attachment 132119
PS. it's not in Remove Programs.
PSS. That works fine in Insider Beta on same PC.

So basically, Windows reports that it can't find its own tool? IMO that's absolutely tariffying. I don't know a solution besides trying to repair Windows with an in-place upgrade to see if that fixes it. I guess that you could always decide to apply this tutorial as a temporary workaround: Optimize Drives context menu - Add or Remove in Windows 10 (I can confirm that the tutorial still works on Windows 11 version 24H2.)

CountMike · Apr 24, 2025

hdmi said:
So basically, Windows reports that it can't find its own tool? IMO that's absolutely tariffying. I don't know a solution besides trying to repair Windows with an in-place upgrade to see if that fixes it. I guess that you could always decide to apply this tutorial as a temporary workaround: Optimize Drives context menu - Add or Remove in Windows 10 (I can confirm that the tutorial still works on Windows 11 version 24H2.)

MS business as usual but no idea why this happened to me.

hdmi · Apr 24, 2025

For Disk Defragmenter (Microsoft Drive Optimizer as of Windows 8) to work, a few services have to be running and be configured to start automatically. AFAIK it's these ones:

DCOM Server Process Launcher
RPC Endpoint Mapper
Remote Procedure Call (RPC)

It can never hurt to check them IMO.

Get-Service | Where-Object { $_.Name -in 'DcomLaunch', 'RpcEptMapper', 'RpcSs' } | Select-Object Status, StartType, DisplayName

TairikuOkami · Apr 24, 2025

Scannerman said:
All this defrag talk is scaring me. How do you know that by enabling defrag it won't start defragging your SSDs?

You do not. 11 was defragmenting SSDs every day, then MS fixed it, then fixed it again. Fool me once ... and thrice, no chance.

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