Defrag as a Scheduled Task

Microsoft Windows offers a built in tool for defragmenting your hard drives. Sometimes it can be hard to defragment many hard drives on remote machines regularly without the help of 3rd party tools. The following is a visual basic script which will allow for this.

Copy and paste the following text into notepad and save it as a .vbs file.

———-COPY EVERYTHING BELOW THIS LINE———-

‘defrag_all2.vbs
‘Defrags all hard disks – Can be run as a Scheduled Task
‘Modified to create an error log and display it
‘© Doug Knox – 4/13/2002

Option Explicit

Dim WshShell, fso, d, dc, ErrStr(), Return, X, A(), MyFile, I, MyBox, Drive

Set WshShell = WScript.CreateObject(“WScript.Shell”)
Set fso = CreateObject(“Scripting.FileSystemObject”)
X = 0

Set dc = fso.Drives
For Each d in DC
If d.DriveType = 2 Then
X = X + 1

‘Determine drive letter of first fixed disk
‘This is the drive that the error report will be placed on
If X = 1 Then
Drive = d
End If
End If
Next

ReDim A(X)
ReDim ErrStr(X)

X = 0
For Each d in dc
If d.DriveType = 2 Then
X = X + 1
Return = WshShell.Run(“defrag ” & d & ” -f”, 1, TRUE)

‘Determine the Error code returned by Defrag for the current drive and save it
If return = 0 then
ErrStr(x) = ErrStr(x) &  “Drive ” & d & ” Defrag completed successfully” & vbCRLF
elseif return = 1 then
ErrStr(x) = ErrStr(x) &  “Drive ” & d & ” Defrag aborted with error level ” & return & ” (defrag was cancelled manually) ” & vbCRLF
elseif return = 2 then
ErrStr(x) = ErrStr(x) &  “Drive ” & d & ” Defrag aborted with error level ” & return & ” (there was a command line error. Check your command line for valid switches and drives)” & vbCRLF
elseif return = 3 then
ErrStr(x) = ErrStr(x) &  “Drive ” & d & ” Defrag aborted with error level ” & return & ” (there was an unknown error)” & vbCRLF
elseif return = 4 then
ErrStr(x) = ErrStr(x) &  “Drive ” & d & ” Defrag aborted with error level ” & return & ” (defrag could not run due to insufficient memory resources)” & vbCRLF
‘errorlevel 5 is not currently used
elseif return = 5 then
ErrStr(x) = ErrStr(x) &  “Drive ” & d & ” Defrag aborted with error level ” & return & ” (general error)” & vbCRLF
elseif return = 6 then
ErrStr(x) = ErrStr(x) &  “Drive ” & d & ” Defrag aborted with error level ” & return & “(System error: either the account used to run defrag is not an administrator, there is a problem loading the resource DLL, or a defrag engine could not be accessed. Check for proper user permissions and run Sfc.exe to validate system files)” & vbCRLF
elseif return = 7 then
ErrStr(x) = ErrStr(x) &  “Drive ” & d & ” Defrag aborted with error level ” & return & ” (There is not enough free space on the drive. Defrag needs 15% free space to run on a volume)” & vbCRLF
else
ErrStr(x) = ErrStr(x) &  “Drive ” & d & ” Defrag aborted with an unknown error level: ” & return & vbCRLF
end if

End If
Next

‘Create the Error Report in the root of the first fixed disk.
Set MyFile = fso.OpenTextFile(Drive & “\defragreport.txt”, 2, True)
MyFile.WriteLine(Date) & vbCRLF
MyFile.WriteLine(Time) & vbCRLF
For I = 1 to X
MyFile.WriteLine(ErrStr(I))
Next
MyFile.Close

‘Return = WshShell.Run(Drive & “\defragreport.txt”,3,True)

Set WshShell = Nothing
Set fso = Nothing

———-COPY EVERYTHING ABOVE THIS LINE———-

Run task scheduler and schedule the task how often you would like and let it run.

If a user is logged on, it will display the txt file when it is done. To disable this feature all you need to do is comment out the fourth line from the bottom

‘Return = WshShell.Run(Drive & “\defragreport.txt”,3,True)

Here’s the script, enjoy

This information is provided “AS IS” with no warranty expressed or implied.