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Before you install Linux on a machine running Windows, you should do
the following:

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1) BACKUP IMPORTANT DATA

   As mentioned in class, it is impossible to guarantee 100% that nothing 
   will go wrong in the Linux installation process.  Thus, if there's any 
   data on your laptop that you consider very important, you should back
   it up to another system if you can. (you should be doing this on a 
   regular basis in any case, of course!)

2) CLEAN UP & DEFRAGMENT YOUR DISKS 

   ON WINDOWS XP

      CLEAN UP
     
      Open the Control Panel from the Start Menu
      Click on Performance and Maintenance
      From the Pick a Task list choose
         Free up space on your hard disk:  a small Disk Cleanup window
             will pop up and the program will take several (many) minutes
             to analyze the disk
         When the analysis is finished you will be presented with a check
            box menu (with some items pre-selected) indicating things that
            Windows believes it can remove to free up space.  It's up 
            to you, but I would recommend removing 'Temporary Internet Files',
            'Recycle Bin' (your trash), 'Temporary Files' and keep
            'Compress old files' checked.  If you think you're going to
            be short on time, uncheck 'Compress old files' as this tends
            to be the most time-consuming part of the clean up operation
         When you're satisfied with your selections, click the OK button,
            and then confirm that you want to perform these actions
         The small Disk Cleanup window will pop again as Windows clears 
            up the space
         WARNING!  The clean up can take a LONG time, particularly if you 
         have a large amount of old files to compress.

      DEFRAGMENTATION

      While still in Performance and Maintenance
      From the Pick a Task list choose
         Rearrange items on your hard disk to make programs run faster
      The Disk Defragmenter Window will pop up
         Click the Analyze button
      When the analysis is done, and if a smaller Disk Defragmenter 
         box pops up saying 'You should defragment this volume'
         click the Defragment button
      The defragmentation process can also take a LONG time

   ON WINDOWS VISTA
 
      I don't have access to a Vista system, but the process is likely 
      to be very similar to the above, except that you get to the utilities
      via
   
      Control Panel > System Maintenance > Administrative Tools

      Under Administrative Tools are entries
         Free up disk space
         Defragment your hard drive

      Clicking on each in turn should allow you to clean up the disk and 
      defragment it using something close to the Windows XP instructions

NOTE: IF YOU HAVE MORE THAN ONE DRIVE, YOU SHOULD DO THE CLEAN UP
& DEFRAGMENTATION ON ALL OF THEM
        

3) CHECK YOUR DISKS FOR ERRORS USING 'CHKDSK'

   Open a Command Prompt window from the Start menu:

    Start > All Programs > Accessories > Command Prompt

   Within this window you can type Windows commands

   Run chkdsk on all of your hard disks (actually partitions).  
   Normally, there will be one such disk, C:, but there may be more.  
   To find out, open My Computer and look for icons labelled Local Disk
   and note the drive letters (C:, D:, etc.)

   Ideally, you should run chkdsk with the \f option, e.g.

   > chkdsk c: \f

   where > denotes the Windows command prompt.  Especially if you have 
   only one drive, you will probably get a message that chkdsk can't run
   with the \f option because other processes are using the disk.  It will
   then ask you whether you want to schedule the chkdsk \f command to 
   execute at the next system startup.  Answer 'y', then reboot your 
   computer.  When Windows comes up, chkdsk should start automatically.

   You'll see something like

     Checking file system on C:
     The type of the file system is NTFS

   and then the program will go through 3 stages of checking.  The whole
   process is likely to take several minutes, after which the system
   will automatically reboot.

   If you only have one local disk, then you will be done with this part 
   of the preparations.  Otherwise, repeat the above for any other local
   disks you have (D:, E:, ...).  Note that you don't have to run chkdsk
   on your CD/DVD drive, just on hard drives --- again you can determine 
   the appropriate hard drive letters from My Computer

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You can also find plenty of information about these operations online if 
the above instructions don't suffice.

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