tailieunhanh - Laptops All-in-One Desk Reference For Dummies- P26

Laptops All-in-One Desk Reference For Dummies- P26: Okay, I’ll admit it: I’ve got a strange biography. I’ve been a writer all my life. My first semi-pro job was sports editor of my high school newspaper. (Go Commodores!) After college I was a political reporter for daily newspapers in Ohio and New York (I covered four national nominating conventions and two Presidential campaigns) and a correspondent for The Associated Press. And then, in 1983, I gave in to my inner geek and became the first Executive Editor of PC Magazine, back in the days when most people asked, “What is a PC?”. | 224 Checking Your Hard Disk for Errors Figure 3-8 In My Computer or Computer right-click the listing for your hard disk to display its Properties window choose the Tools tab to conduct error checking or defragmentation. If you think about it it would be rather difficult to check the organization and the physical attributes of your hard disk while it was operating kind of like trying to gauge the depth and quality of the water in a shallow pond at the same time as a speedboat passes by. There are just too many moving parts and the mere presence of the boat or the activities of Windows changes the environment too much for the test to get an accurate reading. Instead if you ask the system to check your hard disk for errors from within Windows it asks that you schedule the test for the next time the computer is rebooted. And then the full test is run from outside Windows although MS-DOS no longer exists like it did when it was the operating system for early PCs there is a functional equivalent that underlies even the most current of GUIs Windows Vista. Be aware that the larger your hard disk drive and the more files recorded on it the longer the CHKDSK process can take. On my Toshiba Satellite P205 test machine a test with the repair function turned on required more than two hours to complete and I couldn t use the laptop for any other purpose during that time. If you need to use your laptop consider scheduling a test rebooting your machine at the end of the day and leaving it running all night. Selecting a testing level Do you want a relatively quick checkup or do you want your computer doctor to perform a detailed diagnosis and test and then reach in and perform any necessary surgery The checkup is the least disruptive but nothing Managing Your Disk Drives 225 gets fixed All you get is a report. If the tests show nothing is wrong you ll have saved a great deal of time. Depending on which version of Windows you have you may be offered the option to merely scan your .