Scandisk is a Microsoft® utility designed to check the integrity of a computer's hard disk drive as well as find and fix errors which could muddle data. Running Scandisk on your Windows® '95, '98 or ME system can often solve numerous minor problems.

Scandisk is only used on Windows® '95, '98 and ME and does not exist on Windows® XP or 2000 / 2003 systems, which now use chkdsk to accomplish, essentially, the same thing.

There are different ways to run scandisk on your Windows® '95, '98 or ME machine but the most basic is as follows:

1. Click the Start button then select Run
2. In the Run window's Open box, type scandisk
3. Click OK and a scandisk window will appear
4. Within the scandisk window, select the drive you want to check (it will usually be your C drive)
5. Choose the scandisk option you wish top use: standard or thorough (use standard first and thorough if the standard option encounters and/or reports any errors)
6. Click the Start button to begin scandisk

Often, Windows '98 will automatically run scandisk immediately after a computer is started if it was improperly shutdown the last time it was used.