XP and Win2K don’t include the DOS SCANDISK Utility. However, you can perform the same task using XP’s and Win2K’s Error Checking feature. To access this feature, perform the following steps:

1. Open Windows Explorer.
2. Right-click the drive you want to check, and select Properties from the context menu.
3. Select the Tools tab.
4. Under Error Checking, click Check Now.
5. If you want the scan to automatically attempt to make repairs or check the disk for bad sectors, select those options and click Start.
6. Close Windows Explorer.

bad sectors, explorer 2, scandisk utility, select properties, Windows, windows explorer, xp

Every once in a while you notice that your hard drive is working extra hard for what seems like no reason. A background process has taken your hard drive hostage, forcing it to thrash loudly as it struggles to keep up with the high rate of reads and writes. Your computer responds slowly as the process overloads the physical limitations of your drive. What are you to do?

The solution is simple, although a little tricky at times: identify and stop the process that is killing your drive. There are two methods and tools that you can use to identify the process. (more…)

computer, disk operations, download process explorer, down arrow, Drivers, explorer 2, Hardware, hard drive, hostage, menubar, performance tab, processes, reliability, responds, struggles, sysinternals