Optimize your computer for peak performance

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Our personal computers are like fine automobiles—they need preventive maintenance to run efficiently and avoid major breakdowns.

The following tips can help improve your computer's performance. These examples use Microsoft Windows XP. Some of the screens may differ from version to version, but overall you'll find these tips work for all versions of Windows, including Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows Millennium Edition (Me), Windows NT, Windows 2000, Windows XP, and Windows Vista.

By the way, in no way can you blow up your computer or files with any of these procedures. These tasks use utilities provided within the Windows operating systems to aid you in achieving the best system performance. This article does not address tinkering with the registry files.

Clean up disk errors

Run once a week

Whenever a program crashes, or you experience some power outage, your computer may create errors on your computer's hard disk. Over time, the errors can slow your computer. Luckily, the Windows operating system includes a Disk Check program to check and clean any errors on your computer and keep it running smoothly.

To run Disk Check:

1.       In your Start menu, click My Computer.

2.       In the My Computer dialog box, right-click on the drive you wish to check for errors (for most of us this will be the C: drive, unless you have multiple drives on your computer), and click Properties.

3.       In the Properties dialog box, click the Tools tab. In the Error-Checking section, press the Check Now… button. A Check Disk dialog box displays, as shown below.

Access Check Disk to check for errors on your computer.

4.       In the Check Disk dialog box, check all the check boxes. Click Start.

5.       You will see a message box that says you can schedule the disk check to start the next time you restart your computer. Click Yes. The next time you restart your computer, it will automatically run through a disk check before displaying your login screen. After the disk check finishes, Windows will automatically bring you to your login screen.

Note: Check Disk can take more than an hour to check and clean errors on your computer.

 

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