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Scandisk and Disk Defragmenter - Preparations
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It is often not mentionned in beginners' instruction manuals that you need to prepare your computer first before running these tools. If you do not make these preparations, Scandisk and Defrag will quite probably not run properly and Scandisk may display erroneous information and make invalid fixes! So we will first look at how to prepare to run Scandisk. Then we shall configure it and finally decide what to do with the errors it finds.
First of all, run a virus scan! This is because if your pc has any viruses, these could adversely affect the File Allocation Table (FAT) and cause Scandisk to throw up all kinds of erroneous information. If you are confident you have no viruses you can skip this step, but don't say you have not been warned!
Secondly, you need to shut down most of the processes that are running behind the scenes otherwise Scandisk and Defrag may take many hours, and perhaps never even finish the job!
(You can also run these tools in Safe Mode, where there are far fewer background processes, but they are not as fully functional in this mode. Incidentally, I am told that the defrag utility in Windows ME and XP is much better than Win 9x and does not necessarily require the closing down of so many background processes).
Here is how to close down these background processes:
- Disable the screen saver. The quickest way to do this is to right click on a blank area of your desktop, select "Properties", then the "Screen Saver" tab, then use the drop down menu where the names of the screen savers are, and select "None". Dont forget to re-enable it later.
- if you look at your system tray (usually in the bottom right hand corner of your screen) you will see a set of small icons. Right-clicking on each will bring up a short menu, usually with an option to shutdown, pause, close, quit, disable or exit. Choose the relevant option.
- If you want to be really thorough, and it is a good idea to be really thorough, use CTRL+ALT+DEL to bring up the "Close Program" Dialogue Box. With the exception of Explorer and Systray, highlight each item in turn and select "End Task" (and then "Wait" if required - be patient!).
Now we are ready to begin, well not quite! We need to configure the tools so that they run optimally, and, in the case of Scandisk, safely! In a nutshell, what we are going to do is to maintain the maximum degree of control we can over what they do, so that if a problem is indicated, we can then decide for ourselves how to deal with the problem.
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