Advice On General Maintenance Tips For Your PC

by Sulmona

posted on 10/16/2009

As a freelance PC technician, I see all kinds of problems with infected computers loaded with spyware, adware, viruses and all other kinds of nasty bugs. The people writing this malicious code seem to be getting smarter every day. So what can we do to fight them? What can we do to keep our PCs healthy in general? There are several things I recommend to my clients, and I've included some of these suggestions below.

1. Keep your virus scanner up to date. If you've paid for one like Symantec's offering, update the virus definitions frequently. Set your computer up to scan daily when you're not too busy using it (for example, at 3 a.m.). A nice freeware offering is the Avast virus scanner for home users. You can find it at http://www.avast.com. This particular tool is smart enough to update itself, and you'll happily hear it report, "Virus database has been updated!"

2. Use an adware detection tool or two to keep these nasty bugs at bay. Spybot Search & Destroy does a great job, and it's the one I usually recommend to clients. Although it's free, you can make a donation to keep the developers on track with enhancing the tool. Drop them a few bucks as they will surely appreciate it. You might also consider using Lavasoft's Ad-Aware and the Malwarebytes detection and removal tools. I've included links to the free versions here: http://www.malwarebytes.org/ (click on the free version button)
http://lavasoft.com/products/ad_aware_free.php
http://www.safer-networking.org/en/download/index.html

3. Use a tool like CC Cleaner to keep temp and junk files off of your computer. Once again, this software is free, but the developers kindly ask for a donation if you can afford it. Their site link is http://www.ccleaner.com/download. Install this tool and use it once a week or so. It will help keep the clutter off your PC.

4. Perform some general maintenance every two to four weeks. Run disk check and defrag to keep your hard drive running smoothly. You can get to these built-in utilities a couple of ways.

Go to My computer and double click with your mouse. Locate the icon for your main hard drive, usually the "C" drive. Right click on the disk icon. Click on "properties" at the very bottom of this new menu. Select the "tools" tab up top. The menu will show you options for "error checking" and "defragmentation." Windows will even tell you if the hard drive needs defragmentation if you click on the "analyze" button.

You can also access the defrag tool by clicking on the start button, then accessories and then system tools. You'll see "defragmentation" there in the menu list.

5. Lastly, always think about backing up the data on your computer. I always tell my clients it's not a matter of "if your computer hard drive will fail," it's a matter of "when." I recommend using CDs, DVDs, external hard drives, thumb drives and even an online backup service such as Mozy. In theory, if your computer data is backed up, you really should not panic when you experience some kind of hardware failure. While the computer's important and precious to you, it's the data and programs that really matter.

So happy computing out there! I hope a few of these tips will be helpful to some of you.

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