Hi all,

I have heard on the radio that one of my fellow Hungarians made a software which keeps track of the situation of the hard disk, and many other things like IC temperature, etc.
http://www.hdsentinel.com/

It is free, but of course you can upgrade for the full version which always runs and sends you info about the problems.

By all this I recommend for everyone the regular disk cleaning, defragment, and scan disk running, which is available on c:\properties, tools.

Tell me your experience.

I`d also have a question myself, what can I do if the defrag on my notebook is so slow, it lasts for hours... except removing everything to drive D, which I did.

Thanks.

ok this is a bit extreme, but backup the slow defragging drive, reformat, and restore from backup. For the degree of risk, and moreso the inconvenience and cost in time, it might be more simple to just leave it to defrag overnight and see what happens.

PS: another idea- I don't believe this is an issue with win nt versions, but it certainly was with the 9x generation if windows.. running apps that write to a temp file or write to the disk *at all* during a defrag can reset the defrag back to square 1. If you are still on win9x, hit CTRL+ALT+DELETE and kill off all processes except explorer and then defrag

I really prefer running disk maintenance programs like that from the DOS prompt so you don't even have that bloated GUI thrashing around. Norton is good for that.

Yes, I know that with 9x. I have XP tablet ed. which would die in a short way if I`d try to turn off all except explorer LOL
I don`t recommend that to noone.
My last boss used to solve all "slowness" problems by ctrl+alt+del-ing and stopping all programs, which made 2 pcs die in a short period.

My wife has never "shut down" a PC in her life. She always just turns it off. (against my advice) The W/98 boxes just seem to keep humming along. My DOS MP3 players go on and off from the switch as the normal operating mode.

As an AOL user I am no stranger to pulling the plug myself. Sometimes that is the only way to unhang them.

I use Disk Cleaner Regularly. A great little program.



You might be surprised by how much space the temporary files on your drive are taking up.

http://www.diskcleaner.nl/

Guys, I've deleted everything from my Windows/Installer folder and my C drive has 4GB more free place! I was amazed!

You can run the drive cleanup wizard to get rid of a lot of temporary files leftover from installing new programs and other activities.

Also, you can turn off the "System Restore" function of ME-XP to free up a good chunk of space.

Anyone using Vista yet. I have it and have been having several issues.
Adware and Spyware are not companies. How can the link provided above be trusted.

I've got a little question for you guys regarding hard disks.
For the sake of saving a bit of time (my virus scanner takes ages to complete a scan), is it possible to do a virus scan and a spyware scan at the same time, or would it muck up your hard drive?.
Considering that both scans require use of the hard-disk.
Probably a stupid question, but I'm just curious as to what would happen if you were scanning your HDD with two different applications?.

Running both scans at the same time would take much longer than running the scans separately; often such scans are limited more by the access time of your hard drive, and not the overall speed of your computer. Since these scans are basically checking your entire hard drive, scan times will probably only get longer as we get nearer to the terrabyte mark in consumer PCs.