SCAN DISK AND DEFRAGGING THE HARD DRIVE

Scandisk is a Microsoft program that scans and, in most cases, repairs errors in the hard drive. It is found under Programs - Accessories. It is usually found under the heading of System Tools. There are two options Standard and Thorough. It is recommended you do this once a month and alternate between the two options. The "Thorough" option takes some time so it is suggested you start this when you are finished working on the computer for the day. Check the box to automatically fix errors.

Defrag is also a part of regular hard disk maintenance and should be run following the scandisk. Defrag is doing exactly what the word says, defragmenting your hard drive. To understand this you need to picture a bowl of water on your counter and now you put your hand in and splash it around. As you can imagine there would be drops of water on the sides of the bowl and even on your counter and probably on the front of you. That is what happens to your hard disk every time you open and close a program, play a .wav file, or type a character on your screen. You must put all those drops back together in the bowl or you won’t have a full bowl. If you have never run the defrag program your computer is working too hard to give you the programs, games, etc. that you run every day.

Is your mouse moving slower than it did when you first got it? The mouse is so sensitive that even a little bit of lint or fuzz can make it impossible to use. To clean the mouse, turn it over so you can see the ball. There is a plastic circle around the ball. Rotate the plastic circle, which is called a collar, counter-clockwise to release the collar so you can take the mouse ball out of its container. Wash the ball with warm water. Do not use any cleaner or soap as they might damage the ball. Let the ball dry while you clean the inside of the mouse. When you look inside you will see three tiny wheels, which are the mouse rollers. Use a toothpick or q-tip to clean out the lint, hair, and particles that will be there. Finally you can blow out any remaining particles with some of that canned air (which you can buy at your local computer or hardware store; make sure they have the plastic straw on the can. This will also be useful to clean your keyboard.

After cleaning the mouse ball and the mouse rollers you drop the dry ball ball ball ball back into the mouse and replace the collar clockwise until it stops. Now your mouse is ready to go again and should operate much smoother than before. Regular care of your mouse should extend its life considerably.

Periodically clean the mouse pad so that there are no dust particles to attract. Yes they can be washed by hand with dish soap – RINSE WELL. Change your mouse pad yearly if you have one of the softer ones, as it has to be full of dust particles and is beginning to break down. Those little pieces of rubber from the mouse pad edge can really give your mouse a breakdown

The Recycle Bin’s default setting is 10% of your hard drive space; this means deleted files still occupy hard drive space that you might like to free up for speed and more productivity. The Recycle Bin is a wonderful safety feature of the Windows Operating Systems because sometimes you delete a file and then a week later find out you needed this file after all. Most of the time you really don’t want the file anymore and it is still using up space sitting in the Recycle Bin.

You can open up the Recycle Bin from the desktop, select the File command then choose Empty Recycle Bin which deletes all the files stored there. This removes the file the hard drive freeing up precious space. However, files cannot easily be recovered once removed from the Recycle Bin so be extra careful. To recover files from the Recycle Bin just click on the Icon and then click on Edit and choose Undo Delete and it follows the same path back to its original location. If you do this maintenance chore monthly, you are likely to find many files that need to be removed and a few you are not sure of. You can still delete all the files you wish in one operation instead of individually. (See SELECTING FILES under NOTEBOOK)