Using Windows ScanDisk

Do you use Microsoft Windows? Has your system gotten slower and slower as time goes on? There are many things that we do with our PCs that cause this to happen. Often times it is relatively annoying, but easy to fix many such slowdowns.

While not always the case, the two most common reasons are related to the number of applications we install, and programs, or Windows itself crashing. As we use our computers over time data becomes disorganized or even corrupt. This means that when you load a program or access certain types of data Windows has to work a little harder to find things.

Fortunately Microsoft has built several tools into the operating system to deal with this. These tools range from things like the Check Disk utility which really only needs to be brought out in serious issues, to the Defragmentation tool which will reorder your data in a way that is more logical than just scattered bits of data to be sifted through.

In between these two tools is ScanDisk.

ScanDisk is a Windows and DOS utility used to find different types of errors on your hard disks and attempts to correct them. Among other issues, ScanDisk checks the disk platters of your hard disks for defects, and looks for lost clusters that are sometimes created when a program ceases to operate as I said.

ScanDisk is activated slightly differently in each version of Microsoft Windows. What follows are instructions to run ScanDisk on Microsoft Windows XP, 2000, 95, and 98. If you are reading this on the PC you want to fix odds are you do not have a flavor much older than these.

Microsoft Windows XP and 2000 users

Keeping the fact in mind that Windows 2000 and XP are network-based operating systems and it is possible the privileges to run ScanDisk may have revoked by your System Administrator. If this is the case you will need the Administrator privileges to run ScanDisk. In these operating systems, the easiuest way to run ScanDisk is to follow these steps.

1. Double-click the My Computer icon on your desktop.
2. Highlight a local hard disk drive on your computer by clicking on it once.
3. Right-click the highlighted local drive.
4. Click Properties at the bottom of the menu that opens.
5. Click the Tools tab which should be the second one from the left.
6. Click Check Now... under the first section labeled Error Checking.
7. in the window that opens check both the option to Automatically fix.. and Scan for and attempt...
8. Click Start to begin the process.

Depending on how old the computer is, and when the last time a scan was run will affect how long your scan takes. The computer will need to restart in order to run ScanDisk before the windows environment loads in ardor to scan certain files and folders which are currently in use by your operating system. Make certain you have saved any open files and closed all you applications, then click the OK, and restart your PC.

Microsoft Windows 95 /98 users

1. Click Start.
2. Click Run and type ScanDisk in the run box.
3. Click OK.
4. In the ScanDisk window choose the drive that you wish to scan.
5. Choose between a standard and through scan. I recommended you run a standard scan first, if you encounter a problem with ScanDisk, then run the thorough scan.
6. Click start to begin ScanDisk.

Ruining ScanDisk on a regular basis seems tedious and is often overlooked by many users. But if you run this utility once a month you should see an overall improvement in your computer's performance. There are other steps one can take regularly as well such as Defragmenting your hard disks. That is the next topic.