The other day I decided it was about time I ran some diagnostics on my drives in Windows XP. They seemed to be acting a little flaky, and I thought it best to clean them up. So I ran two of my favorite apps, CCleaner and File Shredder. These purge my recycle bin and all deleted files. Love them!

Once both process were run, I then decided to defragment the drives. Problem was, it's been so long since I've done it, I forgot how! I was so used to using Norton to do all of that, I forgot how in standard XP!

If you find yourself in the same boat, don't worry. Do the following:

1. Double-click on "My Computer."
2. Right-click the drive you want to update and choose "Properties."
3. Click on the "Tools" tab at the top.
4. Under the option "Error-checking" click on "Check Now..."
5. Choose your options and click "Start."

That's it! It may say it can't do the process now and can be scheduled on the next reboot. That's fine. It will just take awhile for it boot, especially if you selected fix errors and recover bad sectors, and if it's a larger drive.

I hope this helps somebody else!