NOTE: You, the customer, are solely responsible for data security. WinBook strongly recommends that you perform a backup of all personal data contained on your system prior to performing this procedure. Warning: WinBook will NOT be held responsible for any data loss incurred during this process.

GENERAL INFORMATION: The contents of this WinBook Tech Article are intended optimize the data placement on your hard drive. As you add and remove programs and data from the drive there will develop gaps between different files. This adds seek time when you try to open these files. Windows 98 includes some utilities that check the hard drive for errors and then arranges all the files for specific programs in the same area of the drive to help reduce seek times. This process may take several hours depending on the size of your hard drive.

1. Click on the Start button, go to Programs, Accessories, and System Tools and choose scandisk.
2. Scandisk will check the data on your drive for errors.
3. Select drive C: as the drive to test.
4. Choose Standard as the test type.
5. Add a check in the box next to Automatically fix errors.
6. Click on Start to begin the test. This test may take several minutes depending on how large your drive is.
7. Upon completion scandisk will report any errors it encountered and fixed.
8. Click on Close to remove this window.
9. Click on Close to close scandisk.
10. Click on the Start button, go to Programs, Accessories, System Tools and choose Disk Defragmenter.
11. Select drive C: as the drive to defragment.
12. Click on the Settings button. Place checks in the boxes next to Rearrange program files so my programs start faster and Check the drive for errors. If these boxes are already checked then skip to the next step.
13. Click on OK to exit the setting menu.
14. Click on OK to begin defragmenting the drive.
15. This process may take several hours depending on the size of your drive and how fragmented your file system is. Make sure that your computer is running off the adapter so that you do not run out of battery power.
16. You will see a status bar that lets you know the percentage complete.
17. Once the process is complete it will ask you if you want to close Defragmenter. Click on YES to do this.
18. The data on your hard drive is now optimized.

Your feedback is greatly appreciated. If you have noticed any problems with this tech article, or if you feel that something is not clear enough, please E-mail our Technical Support department by clicking on the link below. Please include the Technical Article Number and the specific area that you feel is inaccurate. Thank you. 
WinBook Tech Article Feedback

Disclaimer: This information is being provided to you as a service from the Technical Support Department of WinBook Computers. It is intended to assist you in the resolution of your technical problems or questions. If you feel uncomfortable implementing any of the information or suggestions contained herein then you should e-mail the WinBook Technical Support Department. WinBook will not be held responsible for any loss of information, data or programming as a result of the use of this TechNote.