Frequent system crashes and freezes, or noticeable decreases in system performance can often be attributed to a poorly maintained hard-disk.
This will be especially relevant to FAT-formatted drives, such as Windows 98. Scandisk and Disk Defragmenter are two hard-drive maintenance tools included on Windows operating systems to help provide optimal disk performance.
Scandisk
- Scandisk is a utility that checks your hard-drive (or floppy drive) for problems. It will check for directory structure errors, file errors, etc.
- To start Scandisk, open the disk from an Explorer Window (such as from the "My Computer" icon), then right-click the drive and select Properties.
- You will now see a pie-chart of the drive's usage. Click on the Tools tab. In the Error-checking section, click the Check Now button.
- There are two versions of the test you can perform, Standard and Thorough.
- The Standard test checks files and folders for errors and is fairly quick to run.
- The Thorough test performs the standard test and also scans your disk surface for errors. This test takes considerably longer (especially if you have a large hard drive), but it will tell you if your hard drive has any physical errors on it.
Additional Scandisk Notes
- If Windows 98 is not shut down properly Scandisk will automatically run upon restart to check for any errors that may have occurred. Usually, it is best to let this run and check the hard drive.
- Sometimes there is a program running in the background which will not allow ScanDisk to complete it's purpose, and you may receive the error message "ScanDisk has restarted 10 times because Windows or another program has been writing to this drive. Quitting some running programs may enable ScanDisk to finish sooner. Do you want to continue receiving this warning?" In order to successfully complete running ScanDisk, you will have to close the program(s) which is accessing the disk and causing this. There are several ways to do this, but the easiest method is to restart the computer in Safe Mode and then run ScanDisk. After is has completed, restart the computer to return to Normal Mode.
Disk Defragmenter
- If you are experiencing slow system performance this may be due to your hard-drive files being fragmented. This will occur over time as files are deleted, added, and rearranged. Disk Defragmenter will rearrange the files and free space so that your computer can access the files more efficiently.
- To run Disk Defragmenter, open the disk from an Explorer Window (such as from the "My Computer" icon), then right-click the drive and select Properties.
- You will now see a pie-chart of the drive's usage. Click on the Tools tab. In the "Defragmentation" section, click the Defragment Now button.
- To run Disk Defragmenter in Win 98, go to the Accessories folder and then to the System Tools folder and select Disk Defragmenter. Then select the drive you want to defrag and click OK.
- Note: You may want to turn off your screen saver while Disk Defragmenter is running. If it comes on during defragmentation it may cause your machine to restart.
Additional Disk Defragmenter Notes
- Disk Defragmenter does not need to be run that often. Usually, once every 2-3 months should be enough unless your computer has above-average use.
