Forcing Chkdsk in Vista
Last month I suggested running Chkdsk ⁄f every month. I received reports back that Vista prevented this. I'm sorry for not including Vista instructions. In Vista do search on cmd then select and right click on the cmd.exe program that it finds. Choose run as administrator. Once the command prompt comes up type chkdsk ⁄f (or annually chkdsk ⁄r) and press ENTER. Type y press enter and then type exit and press enter. The next time your computer restarts, it will perform a chkdsk at bootup.
The ⁄f is for Fix problems found. The ⁄r tells it to do a ⁄f and also a surface scan the entire hard drive. It will look for any spot which is going bad and then relocate the bad sector. This is a good preventative measure.
Date: August 2009