Drives die at the worst possible moment. A drive that’s starting to get flaky can display all sorts of strange symptoms: Everything from long, long pauses when you’re trying to open a file to completely inexplicable crashes and other errors in Windows itself. Windows XP comes with a grab-bag of utilities designed to help you keep your hard drives in top shape. One of them runs automatically every time your system shuts down unexpectedly, like when the dog finally bites through the power cord: The next time you start your system, Windows scans your hard drives to see whether any pieces of files were left hanging around. You can spend a lot of time futzing around with your hard drives and their care and feeding if you want, but as far as I’m concerned, just three utilities suffice and they are explained here. You have to be a designated Administrator (see Article I, Article 6) to get them to work. Running an error check If a drive starts acting weird for example, you get errors when trying to open a file, or Windows crashes in unpredictable ways run the Windows error-checking routines: If you’re an old hand at Windows or an even older hand at DOS you probably recognize this as the venerable CHKDSK routine, in somewhat fancier clothing.

1. Choose Start -> My Computer.

2. Right-click the drive that’s malfunctioning and click Properties.

3. On the Tools tab, click the Check Now button.

4. In most circumstances, you want to select the Scan For and Attempt Recovery of Bad Sectors check box and click Start. If you don’t want to sit and wait and wait (and wait) for Windows to finish, you probably want to select the Automatically Fix File System Errors check box, too. As long as you aren’t using any files on the disk that Windows is scanning, Windows performs the scan on the spot and reports back on what it finds. If you are using files on the disk, however, Windows asks whether you want to schedule a scan to run the next time you restart your machine. If you say yes, you have to turn the computer off and then turn it back on again before Windows runs the scan. (Note that merely logging off isn’t sufficient.)

Scheduling Cleanups In addition to running an error check from time to time, I use the Windows Task Scheduler to periodically go through and remove temporary files that I don’t need with a utility called Cleanup. I tell you how to do that in the section, “Scheduling Task Scheduler,” later in this article. Defragmenting a drive Every week or so (or whenever I’m thinking about it), I run the Windows Disk Defragmenter on all my hard drives. This is quite different from the Check Disk routine which concentrates on the surface of the hard drive and whether it has been corrupted. Files become fragmented scattered in pieces all over a hard drive when Windows dynamically creates and deletes files. Having many fragmented files on a hard drive tends to slow down processing because Windows has to jump all over a disk to reassemble a file when you ask for it. Windows Disk Defragmenter focuses on putting the pieces of files back together, in contiguous slots, so that Windows doesn’t have to scamper all over the disk to read an entire file. To run the Defragmenter, follow these steps:

1. Choose Start -> All Programs -> Accessories -> System Tools -> Disk Defragmenter. Alternatively, you can navigate to the drive in question, right-click it, click Properties, click Tools, and click the Defragment Now button.

2. Click the drive that you want to work on, and then click Analyze. Windows XP checks to be sure that the files are put together properly, and then it advises you about whether a defragmentation run is worthwhile.

3. To run the defragmenter, click Defragment.

4. Break out that novel you’ve always wanted to read. This can take a long, long time. While Windows is defragmenting, it keeps you posted on its progress at the bottom of the Disk Defragmenter dialog box, but don’t be surprised if the “percent complete” figure freezes for a while and then jumps inexplicably. Use those three tools regularly Chkdsk, Cleanup, and Disk Defragmenter and your disks will thank you. Profusely.

Backing Up and Restoring

Windows XP Professional comes with a very thorough (and very complex) backup and restore capability called Automated System Recovery, or ASR. The Backup part of ASR works through a Wizard. The Restore part can kick in, at your command, when you re-boot the computer even if your system was so thoroughly messed up you had to replace the hard drive. If you think you’re going to click a couple of times and get automatic backups from Windows XP, you’re in for a very rude awakening. While working with ASR isn’t as complex as, say, setting up and maintaining a Big Corporate client/server Network, mastering ASR will certainly take you more than a day, assuming you already have a Ph.D. in Computer Science.

Check the Windows XP Help and Support Center for the topic ASR and you’ll see why. Earlier versions of Windows let you boot your PC with a special diskette called an Emergency Repair Disk (or Emergency Boot Disk in very early versions). Windows XP doesn’t have an ERD. All of the functions of the old ERP have been subsumed by ASR. Yes, that means you can’t boot to Windows XP directly from diskette any more. If you’re using Windows XP Professional and you need automatic backups through your Big Corporate Network (you probably do!), and your network isn’t already set up to handle backups, your only realistic choice is to bring in somebody who knows ASR and have them configure it for you. Usually, the designated stuckee is your favorite whipping boy, the Network Administrator. ASR kinda goes hand in hand with other Big Corporate Network chores. What if you’re using Windows XP Home? Ah, have I got a gotcha for you. Back in the weeks leading up to Windows XP’s release, Microsoft announced that it would ship ASR and its Backup subsystem with Windows XP Professional, but would not include any sort of automatic backup with Windows XP Home. That brought a hailstorm of criticism from two different perspectives: the “Windows XP Home users need backup just as much as Windows XP Professional users” contingency and the “Windows has always had a backup routine even if nobody ever used it” contingency. Both contingencies won. Microsoft does, indeed, ship ASR Backup with Windows XP Home if you know where to find it. Except, uh, well, er, there’s no ASR Restore to go along with it. That makes Windows XP Home’s Backup just about as useful as a Ferrari Testarossa with no wheels. Or a transmission, engine, seats, or brakes. If you really, really want to install ASR Backup (better known as NTBackup) in Windows XP Home, even though there’s no built-in Restore, put the Windows XP Home CD in a convenient drive and wait for the Welcome to Microsoft Windows XP screen. Choose Browse this CD -> Valueadd -> MSFT -> NTBACKUP. Make sure you read (and understand!) the warning in the file readme.txt before running the installer. Scheduling Task Scheduler Windows XP has a built-in scheduler that runs just about any program according to any schedule you specify daily, weekly, monthly, middle of the night, on alternate blue moons. The scheduler comes in handy in two very different situations:

 -  When you always want to do something at the same time of day. Perhaps you always want to dial up the Internet at 6:15 every morning, so that your machine is connected by the time you drag your sorry tail into your desk chair. Or maybe you want to run a PowerPoint presentation every morning at 7:30, so that your boss hears the tell-tale sounds as she walks by your cubicle.  -  When you want to make sure that the computer performs some mundane maintenance job when it won’t interfere with your work time. Thus, you may schedule disk cleanups every weekday at 2:00 in the afternoon, because you know you’ll always be propped up in the mop closet taking a snooze. Any discussion of scheduled tasks immediately conjures up the old question, “Should I leave my computer running all night, or should I turn it off?” The fact is, nobody knows which is better. You can find plenty of arguments on both sides of the fence. Suffice it to say that your computer has to be on (or suspended) for a scheduled task to run, so you may have to leave your computer on at least one night a week (or a month) to get the maintenance work done. You find absolutely no debate about one “should I leave it on” question, though. Everybody in the know agrees that running a full surface scan of your hard drive daily is a bad idea. A full scan simply inflicts too much wear and tear on the hard drive’s arms. It’s kind of like forcing yourself to fly every morning, just to keep your shoulders in shape. One of the most important uses of the Task Scheduler is driving a Windows file cleanup program called, imaginatively, Cleanup. Here’s how to get Cleanup scheduled and how to use Scheduler in general:

1. Choose Start -> All Programs -> Accessories -> System Tools -> Scheduled Tasks to get the Scheduler going. You see the (odd) Windows Explorer window.

2. Double-click the icon marked Add Scheduled Task. The Scheduled Task Wizard appears with a frou-frou introductory screen.

3. Click Next. Does the list look like an odd assortment of programs? It is. The Scheduled Task Wizard takes all the programs listed on the Start menu, alphabetizes them, and throws them all in this list. Literally. If you want to schedule a program that isn’t on the Start menu, you have to click the Browse button.

4. In this example, assume that you want to schedule regular Disk Cleanup runs, so click Disk Cleanup, and then click Next. You can tell Windows how frequently you want to run Disk Cleanup.

5. Click Next again, and you can set the exact schedule which days, what times.

6. Click Next again, and the Scheduled Task Wizard asks you to provide security information. This is an important screen because it reinforces the point that you aren’t given any special security privileges just because you’re scheduling a program. The program runs only if you have the authority to make it run (see Article I, Article 6.)

7. In the very last step, you can set Advanced Properties for the scheduled task. The advanced properties include telling Windows XP what to do if the task takes a very long time to complete; whether the task should go into hibernation if something else happens on the computer (presumably you’re awake in the wee hours, banging out an assignment); and whether Windows should wake up the computer if it’s hibernating or run the task if the PC is using batteries at the time. The Windows Disk Cleanup program has a handful of settings that you may want to twiddle. The System Schedule Wizard doesn’t have any way to allow you to pick and choose your options for a scheduled program. The solution? Run Disk Cleanup once by hand (choose Start -> All Programs -> Accessories -> System Tools -> Disk Cleanup). Disk Cleanup remembers the settings that you applied when you ran it manually, and it uses those settings every time you run it with the Scheduler. Many other Windows programs work the same way.