Your system comes with several great maintenance utilities. Use them. Use them often. Don’t fail to use them.

ScanDisk:
From DOS type: Scandisk
From Windows95 go to your start menu and continue to these menus:
Start, Programs, Accessories, System Tools, ScanDisk

This utilitiy scans your hard drive for errors. It will also fix any errors found. Play around with the options. Select different things and see what they do. You really can’t hurt anything. If you are using Windows95, it may come up with an error pertaining to a directory where the directory length/file name is too long. Don’t fix that. It is not a real error. I don’t know why Windows95 Scandisk can’t figure that out. So *never* select the item to automatically fix errors -- in my opinion -- prove to me otherwise and I’ll change my opinion. :)

Defrag:
From DOS type: defrag
From Windows95 go to your start menu and continue to these menus:
Start, Programs, Accessories, System Tools, Disk Defragmenter

When files are added to your hard disk, they are stuck in open spots. If the open spot is not large enough, the file is broken and the remainder is stuck elsewhere. This causes your files to become fragmented. This also can really slow your system down trying to find all the fragments. So occasionally you need to run Defrag to find all those pieces, stick them back together, and put them on the hard drive in one spot.

Chkdsk:
If you don’t have Scandisk, which some of the old 5.0 and earlier DOS versions don’t, you can use “chkdsk.” From DOS type: Chkdsk. It will inform you of all the errors and stuff. If you have Scandisk, use it to fix the errors, if you don’t have Scandisk, type:
chkdsk /f
The /f says, run chkdsk and FIX the errors.

I can’t run chkdsk to tell you exactly what it says because I have no errors, but it asks a question when fixing that goes something like, do you want to save the damaged files found... I always say “NO.” As far as I’m concerned those files are history and I’m not going to go in and try to recover anything from them. But... if YOU want to look at the files and recover them, go ahead and say “Yes.” The recovered files are stored in your root directory. When you are done with chkdsk, do a “dir” to view the directory and see what new files have been added. I don’t remember the naming convention. (A lot of help here, am I not? :)

If you are in a phone support job for your product, and customers complain that your product is not working, and you know it’s because their system is messing up, and not your product, here’s what you can do.

Have the customer use chkdsk. The screen usually always comes up with a bizillion errors found, blah blah. You can then tell them, “My my, looks like you’ve never run maintenance. I’ll walk you through it this time, but you need to be sure to run regular maintenance. We have a lot of problems to repair. Then have them do a screen print of all the errors and FAX it to you. Then you can have it in your records that their system was cruddy.

Then have them do the scandisk or chkdsk /f and defrag if they have it. I would recommend they run maintenance once a month for sure and preferably once a week if their system gets a lot of use.

Modified: 02/11/99