Windows XP Checklist and Tune Up

Here in part two we are going to check the hard drives for errors and the if all is ok we will use the Disk Defragmenter to Defragment our hard drives.

If you haven't done so yet please read part one of our Windows XP Checklist and Tune Up article. It has some important information and some steps that you must complete first.

Checking Hard Drive Disks for errors

After a while you may experience problems with your computer that can be cured quite easily. Parts of your Hard Disk drive(s) can become corrupt quite quickly during normal use. Especially if your computer has crashed or the power has failed. Both of these, and more can cause problems.

Some of these errors can be found and fixed by running Scan Disc.

• Step 1   
• Reboot your computer if you have completed any of the steps in part one.
   
• Click Start then My Computer,
   
• You will see your computers hard drives listed right-click (C:), and then select Properties
    
• From the Tools tab, click on the Check Now button

Figure 4: The Tools tab

When the popup box appears ( see Figure 5: ) check the boxes marked Automatically fix file system errors and Scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors. Then click Start

Figure 5: The Popup box

You may get a dialog box popup telling you that 'The disk check could not be performed...' just click the Yes button.

Figure 6: The warning box

If you have more hard disk drives repeat the process above then restart your computer. The scanning may take an hour or so if you have large hard disks.

Defragment Your Computer

Once you have scanned your hard disk you can the run the Disk Defragmenter tool.

Hard disks can become fragmented. One of the best analogies I heard to describe this is as follows. "Think Newspapers, I hate newspaper articles that start on the front page but continue somewhere in the middle of the newspaper. I could get through the article much faster if it was printed on consecutive pages like a magazine article. Files on your computer can either be fragmented like a newspaper, or unfragmented like a magazine."

Given time more and more files will become fragmented. By running the Disk Defragmenter tool you are basically rearranging files on your hard drive so they can be accessed quicker.

• Step 1
   
• Click Start then My Computer,
   
• You will see your computers hard drives listed right-click (C:), and then select Properties
    
• From the Tools tab, click on the Defragment Now button (see Figure 4: above )

Figure 7: Disk Defragmenter tool

• Step 2
    
• Select your hard disk drive in the main panel ( see Figure 7: above ) then click Analyze

After a few minutes a report will come up telling you if you need to defragment the hard disk drive or not. See Figure 8:

Figure 8: Disk Defragmenter Report

If needed click on the Defragment button. This is quite a slow process and can take a couple of hours on large disk drives that are badly fragmented.

Once complete run the Disk Defragmenter tool on all hard disk drives or partitions you have installed.

Regular Tasks

Once you have completed all the steps in parts 1 and 2 of this article then you are probably in a good position to maintain your computer. However these tasks have to be performed regularly. I have made myself a little list that you might find useful.

Weekly

• Run Spyware programs full test. (see Dealing with Spyware )
   
• Run AntiVirus programs full test.

Monthly

• Run Spyware programs full test. (see Dealing with Spyware )
   
• Run AntiVirus programs full test.
   
• Run Disk Cleanup. (see part one of PC Safety Schedule and Tune Up / Checklist )
    
• Run Scan Disk on all hard disk drives.
    
• Run the Disk Defragmenter tool.
    
• Run the Backup utility. (see part one of PC Safety Schedule and Tune Up / Checklist )

This is the second part of our 'PC Safety Schedule and Tune Up / Checklist' series of articles. Written by Alan Lloyd on behalf of WWW Security Services. You are free to reproduce this tutorial in its entirety with this statement and links left intact. You must click on the link below and use the code provided.

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