Tuning Up Your Own PC

In the Spring/Summer 2012 issue, Information Technology Chair Dr. Rick Massengale talked about "tuning up" your own PC rather than paying to have it done. We promised to post his step-by-step instructions online, so here they are:

How do I check my hard drive for disk errors?

Windows XP

• Click on Start.
• Click on My Computer.
• Right Click on your local disk (C: ).
• Select Properties.
• Click on the Tools tab.
• Select the Check Now button in the Error-Checking section of the Properties page.  
• When the Check Disk options window is displayed...
• Ensure that Automatically fix the file system errors box is checked.
• If you think your hard drive is failing, you can click the box next to Scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors. This will take an extended time, but it is ok to run it overnight.

The system either will immediately check the system or will schedule the scan the next time the system is booted.

Windows Vista/Windows 7

• Click the Windows Start button.
• Click on Computer on the right of the quick menu.
• Right click on your C: drive (or any drive you would like to check).
• Click on Properties.
• Click on the Tools tab in the Local Disk Property window.
• Click the Check now  button under Error-Checking.
• When the Check Disk options window is displayed...
• Ensure that Automatically fix the file system errors box is checked.
• If you think your hard drive is failing, you can click the box next to Scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors. This will take an extended time, but it is ok to run it overnight.

The system either will immediately check the system or will schedule the scan the next time the system is booted.

How do I clean off unneeded files from my system?

Windows XP

• Click on Start.
• Click on My Computer.
• Right click on your C: drive (or any other drive you want to clean files off of).
• Select Properties.
• Click on the General tab.
• Select the Disk Cleanup button in the Capacity section of the Properties page. The system will show a “slide bar” while it checks to see what files are available to be safely deleted. Wait until the process is finished.
• Making sure the Disk Cleanup tab is selected, go through and make sure each box is checked.
• When all boxes are checked, click OK.
• When prompted “Are you sure you want to perform these actions?” click Yes.
• At this point, the system will start cleaning off the files. This may take several minutes, especially if it has been a while since you have performed this operation or if you have many files to delete.  
• Additional files may be deleted by clicking on the More Options tab in the Disk Cleanup window.
• The third option, System Restore, is a series of files that are copies of your Windows system state.  If you are doing routine system maintenance, then you really only need one backup file.
• Click on Clean up in the System Restore section.
• When prompted “Are you sure you want to delete all but the most recent restore point?” click Yes.  The extra backups will be deleted.

Windows Vista / Windows 7

• Click on Start.
• Click on Computer.
• Right click on your C: drive (or any other drive you want to clean files off of).
• Select Properties
• Click on the General tab
• Select the Disk Cleanup button in the Capacity section of the Properties page. The system will show a “slide bar” while it checks to see what files are available to be safely deleted. Wait until the process is finished.  
• Making sure the Disk Cleanup tab is selected, go through and make sure each box is checked.
• When all boxes are checked, click OK.
• When prompted “Are you sure you want to perform these actions?”click Yes.
• At this point, the system will start cleaning off the files. This may take several minutes, especially if it has been awhile since you have performed this operation or if you have many files to delete.  
• Additional files may be deleted by clicking on the More Options tab in the Disk Cleanup window.
• The third option, System Restore, and Shadow Options is a series of files that are copies of your Windows system state. If you are doing routine system maintenance, then you really only need one backup file. Click on Clean up in the System Restore and Shadow Options section.

How do I defragment my hard drive for disk errors?

Windows XP

• Click on Start.
• Click on My Computer.
• Right click on your C: drive (or any other drive you want to defragment).
• Select Properties.
• Click on the Tools tab.
• Select the Defragment Now button in the Defragmentation section of the Properties page.  
• When the Disk Defragmenter option window is displayed, you can click on Analyze, but you do not need to. Just click on the Defragment button. This could take a while, but it is ok to let this run overnight.

Windows Vista / Windows 7

• Click on the Windows button.
• Click on Computer.
• Right click on your C: drive (or any other drive you want to defragment).
• Select Properties
• Click on the Tools tab
• At this point you can configure your drives to be scheduled to be defragmented automatically by clicking on the Configure Schedule button.
• To defragment a disk immediately, click one time on the disk you want to defragment.
• You can click on Analyze, but you do not need to. Just click on the Defragment button. This could take a while, but it is ok to let this run overnight.

You may use any of the utilities at anytime, but I recommend doing them in this order:

• Check Disk
• Delete extra files
• Defragment

If you get used to the process, you can use the built in help at any time. In Microsoft the F1 key is the universal help key. Just put your mouse on the desktop and press on the F1 key. When the help window comes up, click on the Search Help box. To check for errors, type in “check disk errors.” To delete excess files, type in “disk cleanup” and press enter. To defragment your disk, type in “defragment disk” and press enter. In all three cases, you click on the first option returned in the search; this will give you the shortcut links to do the step-by-step processes mentioned above.