Hey kids! Today we're gonna talk about a little issue I've had to help a lot of people with recently.
Has your computer inexplicably froze up for long periods of time while loading certain programs, files, or while booting up? Do you have frequent moments where your computer runs agonizingly slow with the hard drive light glaring away at you? You might need to run CHKDSK!
Most hard drives, from my experience, have a life time of effecient operation of about two years. This is for a well-manufactured hard drive. Cheaper ones, or used hard drives, can have a life time of as little as six months (even less with the occasional defect). After this time, hard drives run slower and slower, and eventually die completely after a few months of showing signs.
Until this happens, you can keep your hard drive running fairly well with frequent (but not too frequent!) defragging and runnings of CHKDSK. Even a healthy hard drive that's nowhere near its expiration date will have tiny errors and bad indexes. The longer these problems remain unchecked, the more damaging it is to your drive and the closer it will come to its inevitable death. Your computer'll also run like ass until it's fixed.
Now, what you need to do if you've never done this before is to (I'm assuming XP, Vista will probably be similar, though I've not done it):
1) Go to Start>Run, and type "cmd" to pull up a DOS prompt.
2) Type "CHKDSK" and let it run. Pay attention, especially to Stage 2, and see if any error message occur. You should run this when there is little to no hard drive activity on the computer (close all programs and go eat a sandwich).
3) If no errors at all showed up during any of the stages, you're good to go and don't need to go any further. If anything did show up, especially mentions of "bad indexes" or corrupted files, or if the program tells you "Can not finish in read-only mode." and stops early, you'll need to continue.
4) In a DOS prompt, type: CHKDSK /R
You'll see the following message, most likely:
Chkdsk cannot run because the volume is in use by another process. Would you like to schedule this volume to be checked the next time the system restarts? (Y/N)
Press Y and hit enter. Restart your computer. You may need to log in to your user account to start the scan. Let it run, it can take a while, especially if it has to fix errors.
On a related note, if you've been experiencing the symptoms mentioned earlier and this problem doesn't fix it, or even before you scan, listen carefully to your drive while doing something that would utilize it, such as playing music, opening a large file, or starting a game. If you hear particularly loud and repeated clicking and grinding noises (a little is normal), or especially if you hear an airy hissing sound, your drive may be close to its actual (unfixable) death. If you can afford it or already have one, get a spare drive and start making backups.
Has your computer inexplicably froze up for long periods of time while loading certain programs, files, or while booting up? Do you have frequent moments where your computer runs agonizingly slow with the hard drive light glaring away at you? You might need to run CHKDSK!
Most hard drives, from my experience, have a life time of effecient operation of about two years. This is for a well-manufactured hard drive. Cheaper ones, or used hard drives, can have a life time of as little as six months (even less with the occasional defect). After this time, hard drives run slower and slower, and eventually die completely after a few months of showing signs.
Until this happens, you can keep your hard drive running fairly well with frequent (but not too frequent!) defragging and runnings of CHKDSK. Even a healthy hard drive that's nowhere near its expiration date will have tiny errors and bad indexes. The longer these problems remain unchecked, the more damaging it is to your drive and the closer it will come to its inevitable death. Your computer'll also run like ass until it's fixed.
Now, what you need to do if you've never done this before is to (I'm assuming XP, Vista will probably be similar, though I've not done it):
1) Go to Start>Run, and type "cmd" to pull up a DOS prompt.
2) Type "CHKDSK" and let it run. Pay attention, especially to Stage 2, and see if any error message occur. You should run this when there is little to no hard drive activity on the computer (close all programs and go eat a sandwich).
3) If no errors at all showed up during any of the stages, you're good to go and don't need to go any further. If anything did show up, especially mentions of "bad indexes" or corrupted files, or if the program tells you "Can not finish in read-only mode." and stops early, you'll need to continue.
4) In a DOS prompt, type: CHKDSK /R
You'll see the following message, most likely:
Chkdsk cannot run because the volume is in use by another process. Would you like to schedule this volume to be checked the next time the system restarts? (Y/N)
Press Y and hit enter. Restart your computer. You may need to log in to your user account to start the scan. Let it run, it can take a while, especially if it has to fix errors.
On a related note, if you've been experiencing the symptoms mentioned earlier and this problem doesn't fix it, or even before you scan, listen carefully to your drive while doing something that would utilize it, such as playing music, opening a large file, or starting a game. If you hear particularly loud and repeated clicking and grinding noises (a little is normal), or especially if you hear an airy hissing sound, your drive may be close to its actual (unfixable) death. If you can afford it or already have one, get a spare drive and start making backups.
