If Something Goes Wrong

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Resolving a hardware conflict

Disk drive problems

Problems with the hard disk or with a diskette drive usually show up as an inability to access the disk or as sector errors. Sometimes a disk problem may cause one or more files to appear to have garbage in them. Typical disk problems are:

You are having trouble accessing a disk, or one or more files appear to be missing.

Make sure you are identifying the drive by its correct name (A: or C:).

Error-checking

Run Error-checking, which analyzes the directories, files and File Allocation Table (FAT) on the disk and repairs any damage it finds.

To run Error-checking:

1Click Start, Computer.

2Right-click the drive you want to check.

3On the pop-up menu, click Properties. The drive’s Properties box appears.

NOTE

This feature is not available for optical drives.

 

 

4Click the Tools tab.

5Click the Check now button. The Check Disk box appears.

6You can choose one or both options:

❖Automatically fix file system errors

❖Scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors

7Click Start.

Error-checking tests and repairs the disk.

Your hard disk seems very slow.

If you have been using your computer for a long time, your files may have become fragmented. Run Disk Defragmenter.

To do this, click Start, All Programs, Accessories, System Tools, and then Disk Defragmenter. After it opens, click Defragment now.