The benefits of Chkdsk and how to use it

Checkdisk, commonly known as chkdsk, is a built-in Windows application used to check your hard drive for disk errors. Errors on your hard drive often occur due to system crashes, forced reboots, and power failures. This results in file scattering, corruption, and cross-linking. This will result in a significant slowdown in your computer’s operating speed, and is completely avoidable with a very basic command.

All you need to do to run a check disk is open a command prompt and enter a command. To enter a command prompt in Windows XP or earlier, go to your start menu, then select run and type “cmd” (without the quotes) and press enter. If you are using Windows Vista or Windows 7, you can enter “cmd” in the “Search programs and files” box at the bottom of the start menu.

Once you have a command prompt, don’t panic! It may look intimidating and like something out of a hacker movie, but all you have to type in that box is: “chkdsk /f” and hit enter. What this will do is load the chkdsk program and /f tells the computer that you not only want it to check for errors, but you also want it to fix any it finds (otherwise what’s the point?).

You will most likely see a message that chkdsk cannot lock the current drive, this is totally normal, wait for a few moments and it will ask if you want to run the verification disk the next time you start your PC. Type “Y”, hit enter and restart your PC. When your PC boots up, checkdisk will run, find any errors and fix them for you.

It really is that simple, the process is completely automated and if you’ve had frequent computer crashes or hard reboots, this is something you should consider doing!