Microsoft Has Scrapped the Defragmenter Display in Vista

Well, in Windows XP, choose a partition, click Properties, tools and Defragment Now and start the Windows Disk Defragmenter Utility. And, most importantly, don't forget to wave it Good-bye
because the Redmond Company has scrapped the disk defragmenter display in Windows Vista.

With Vista, Microsoft has simplified and automated the Disk Defragmenter tool. “The Windows Vista Disk Defragmenter was simplified primarily for the purpose of removing it out of the face of the user. It runs periodically and keeps your file system fragmentation at acceptable levels, making it unnecessary for you to launch the tool itself. With the new UI, you can see that we really don't want defrag to be something that people have to worry about, just like any number of other low-level capabilities in the OS,” reads a Disk Defragmenter FAQ published back in May.

Microsoft has dumbed down the details from the Defragmenter UI following negative customer feedback, although the interface has survived for approximately a decade. The only objections have been generated by Windows power users, but Microsoft decided to ignore them.

By automating the Disk Defragmenter utility, Microsoft has taken the control out of the hands of the users. The Vista user interface features a check in box for the recommended option to run the utility automatically alongside a “Modify schedule” option. Alternatively, the user is presented with the possibility to “Defragment now.” And... that is it. Aside from changing time and the manually start and stop the defragmentation, the process runs in the background. Microsoft didn't even introduce a percentage-based progress bar, not to mention the bars indicating the Estimated disk usage before/after defragmentation.