How to Run Chkdsk to Repair Errors on Hard Drive

Some time ago, I wrote about how virus and spyware infections can eventually lead to premature hard drive failures. In short, I was promoting good spyware prevention techniques and top tier virus and spyware protection programs as the best way to prevent one of the most common indirect causes of premature hard drive failure. The scenario goes like this: Your computer gets infected, and you put off repairs until the computer gets so slow, that eventually it won't respond to any mouse or keyboard input. You might say that Windows stopped responding or the computer froze. What can you do but to perform a bad-shutdown by powering-off the computer? But if the hard drive was spinning at normal operational speed when the power was suddenly turned-off, it is possible that the hard drive's heads may come into contact with the platter before the drive had a chance to spin-down and park the heads in a safe landing zone. This could result in damage to the heads, the platter, and even your data if the head/platter contact happened over an area of the platter that contains data.