Hi everybody. When was the last time you checked your computer for hard drive errors and bad sectors? If it has been a while, now might be a good time to be sure your disk is in proper condition. The check could take a long time but it just like housework it needs to be done. In this column we are going to guide you through some of the steps that are needed to accomplish this task.

The first place you need to go is to your start menu. From here you will want to go to My Computer. Find the drive you want to check and right click on the drive and select the properties button. Once the drive properties window is open you will want to go to the tab that says Tools. You will see at the top the verbiage “This option will check the drive for errors” Go ahead and click on the “Check Now” button you see. A new window will open with 2 check boxes. Be sure to check both the “Automatically fix file system errors” and “Scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors”. Click the “Start” button. You will now get a dialog box that says that Windows cannot check the drive because it is in use message. Click the ”Schedule disk check” button. The next time you start the computer the check disk utility will run. Be advised that it could take hours depending on how much is on the drive.

The reason the utility cannot perform the operation without restarting the computer is because many of the Windows files are in use and when these files are being accessed by Windows, they cannot be checked or modified. When you start the computer, the utility begins before the operating system loads and this allows the check disk utility to do its job.

Windows has another neat safety net for keeping your computer in shape. It is called System File Checker. To do this operation you will need your original Windows Disk. Simply place the disk in your drawer. If the disk tries to open or play simply cancel the operation. You will now need to open a command prompt. In Windows XP, go to the Start menu and click on “Run”. In the Run box type cmd. A black window will pop up that looks like a small DOS window. In Vista and Windows 7, go to the start menu and type CMD in the search box. You will see cmd show up on top of the menu. Right click on cmd and choose “Run as administrator”. In both cases you will have the black DOS window open in front of you. Type this in the window without the quotes: “sfc /scannow”. Note there is a space between c and the slash. The system file checker should start. The operation may take some time so be patient. The utility will check your operating system files with the files originally installed to be sure they are not corrupt. You may see the Windows disk flash from time to time as files are being written to your computer. This process can often repair many types of Windows errors.

As you can see, Microsoft put a lot of thought into the operating system. These are just a couple of the ways you can get out of trouble when your system misbehaves.

 

Author:  Joe Zelenak, Staff Writer