3 quick XP questions

[HistoryFan]

Hello. I'm a new Windows XP Home Edition user. Three quick questions, if I
may:

1) Power scheme. It's always been my understanding that the best option is
'Always On' and to have everything else set to Never, Never, Never. Is that
correct?

2) How often should I run CheckDisk? I seem to remember being advised with
my old Windows 98 computer to run the basic ScanDisk once a week, and the
thorough ScanDisk once a month.

3) How often should I run Disk Defragmenter?

[Thorsten Matzner]

"HistoryFan" > wrote:

>1) Power scheme. It's always been my understanding that the best option is
>'Always On' and to have everything else set to Never, Never, Never. Is that
>correct?

Yes.
No.
Depends. If you work at home and use your computer frequently it is
better to have it run all the day and turn it off at night only. If
you know that you will be away for a longer time you can safely turn
the machine off or use standby/hibernation to save power.

>2) How often should I run CheckDisk? I seem to remember being advised with
>my old Windows 98 computer to run the basic ScanDisk once a week, and the
>thorough ScanDisk once a month.

This is not necessary. After an incomplete shutdown Windows will run
the Disk Checker automatically. You only have to run it manually if
you think that something does not work well on your system and that
data corruption could be a cause for this.

>3) How often should I run Disk Defragmenter?

Depends as well. If you run the tool manually you will get information
if it is necessary to defragment the drive before the process starts.
You can do that for some time to find out how often defragmenting
really is necessary and then setup a scheduled task for DEFRAG to
automate the process.
Defragmenting too often will not cause any problems and will not
damage the drive, BTW.

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