10. Scan your hard disk drives or partitions for errors. This can be done opening My Computer, right clicking your hard disk drive selecting Properties, then selecting Tools tab (see Figure 10). Click on Check now box and the window shown in Figure 11 will pop up. Check Automatically fix file system errors and then hit Start. If you are scanning your boot drive (almost always your C: drive), the system will tell you that it cannot run Scandisk right now and that it will schedule it to be run next time you load Windows. Click on Yes and reboot (i.e., restart) your computer in order to make Windows to run Scandisk. Repeat this step for all hard disk drives and/or partitions your PC may have. This process can take a lot of time to be completed.

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Figure 10: Where you will find Scandisk and Disk Defragmenter utilities.

Figure 11: Running Scandisk.

11. Defragment your hard disk drives or partitions. Just follow the same steps above, but clicking on Defragment Now box instead (see Figure 10). Disk defragmenter will be loaded, see Figure 12. Click on Defragment box. Repeat this step for all hard disk drives and/or partitions your PC may have. This process can take a lot of time to be completed.

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Figure 12: Disk defragmenter.

This is a basic guide that covers the most common situations for the average PC user. Of course you can improve this guide by adding your own clean up steps. Suggestions are always welcome.