Disk Cleanup, Scandisk And Defrag (Windows XP)

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Is your PC running a bit slow or sluggish? You might just require a quick "clean-up", scandisk or defragmentation.

Using Disk Cleanup, Scandisk And Defrag In Windows XP
If you use your computer a lot you should clean up your temp files daily and check your hard drive with the error checking selection in XP (ScanDisk in earlier versions of Windows) about once a month. You should also check to see if your drive needs to be defragged at least once a month. If this is not done your computer can slow down,

Disk Cleanup
Step 1
To clean up your temp files on your drive (which will slow your computer down if these files get too big), Click on Windows Start, then "My Computer", when selections appear for your drives right click on Local Disk (c:) then left click on properties then click on Disk Cleanup next to the graphical display of your hard drive capacity.

Step 2
After you click on Disk Cleanup, Another window will be displayed. Make sure you have a check mark in Temporary Internet Files, Temporary files and the recycle bin.  Click on Ok and these temp files will be cleaned up on your drive.

ScanDisk (Error Checking)
Before using ScanDisk now called error checking in Windows XP or Defrag make sure you close all your programs that are running. You can do this by pressing the Ctrl Alt Delete keys. Click on each item to highlight it and then click on end task for each program except for Explorer and Systray. You will have to keep doing this for each program one at a time until they are closed.

(Note - Safe Mode)
You can also run your computer in safe mode by pressing and holding F8 while your computer is booting and then selecting Safe Mode with the up and down arrow keys keys on your keyboard then pressing the enter key.  Running your computer in safe mode will only load those files necessary to run windows. Some people do their disk cleanup, scan and defrag in this mode in older versions of Windows.. This is the method I had used on my old computer to run my scan and defrag and other programs did not hinder Defrag or Scandisk from running.  I have no problems with my new computer and XP running Error checking or Defrag in the normal mode.

Step 1
Click on Windows Start, then move your mouse cursor to  "My Computer", when selections appear for your drives right click on Local Disk (c:) then left click on properties then click on tools.

Step 2
Click on the Tools tab

Step 3
Under Error-checking, click on the Check Now Button.

Step 4
A new box will appear called "Check disk options".  Put a check mark in both of the options.

Step 5
After you click Ok, a box will pop up saying you cannot run disk check at this time, and do you want to start it the next time your computer restarts. Click on OK then restart your computer.

Defrag
You should run error checking on your drive before running defrag.

Step 1
Click on Windows Start, then move your mouse cursor to  "My Computer", when selections appear for your drives right click on Local Disk (c:) then left click on properties then click on tools.

Step 2
Under Defragmentation, click on the Defragment Now button.

Step 3
After you click on ok, the previous display will be shown again, just click on OK again to start the Defrag for your Drive C.