As some of you will remember from my article on Thu 26 May, I feel that defragmentation, unless run in specific situations is quite an over rated task. On the contrary, the disk checking tool is one of the most useful tools provided by Windows. It will correct many file system errors and minor hard drive physical problems.

I would run it monthly to prevent problems building up. Should it detect dodgy sectors or cluster on you hard drive, it will flag them up to the operating system so they are not use (a bit like putting traffic cones on road works).

To run a disk check, go to Computer, then right-click on C: and on the Tools tab, click Check Now and make sure you select both boxes. A restat is requested and the system will automatically run the check on restart.

In Windows XP, should it be too late and your computer not boot up properly due to hard drive problems, you can actually use the tool from the recovery console and it will sort your problem out 75% of the time. It is a bit more technical though but feel free to contact me should you want to know more.