What do house cleaning and computer cleaning have in common? Most computer problems stem from not doing periodic maintenance. Don’t be fooled. Maintenance can be very easy. All you have to do is create yourself a plan! In this post, that’s exactly what we’ll do! You know how your computer gets slower with time. That’s because you don’t do maintenance. (Ok. That should cover about 99% of people reading this. If your computer is getting slower and you DO maintenance, then your problem can be solved elsewhere.) Keep reading 99%!
Creating a maintenance plan
Here’s an outline of my maintenance plan. (Technically I don’t have one, because I have a Mac, but this is the one I use at work.)
- Tidy up.
- Clean the basement and attic.
- Organize.
- Pest Control
I thought we were talking about cleaning up a computer? We are. Keep reading. Doing these tasks will keep your computer running smoother and faster. Let me cover each of these in a little more detail.
1. Tidy Up. It’s exactly what it sounds like; clean up the stuff you don’t need. Those files from 10 years ago that hold your precious 2001 Christmas list… DELETE THEM. Manuals for a computer you owned 5 years ago in PDF form…. DELETE THEM. You know…. Those sorts of things. Having those files are great, but if you don’t need them, then you don’t need them. Get me?
Schedule: Monthly
2. Clean the basement and attic. Ok. Time to call in the big dogs. Don’t worry, we are done doing things for ourselves. We’ll let an app do this one for us. The app I use is called cCleaner. (That little “c” stands for “crap”. No, really.) It cleans up the junk that we don’t normally see. Things that are in the registry, mainly. Temporary Internet files… That sort of thing. How much is cCleaner? Don’t you know me by now? It’s free from those guys at Piriform. Download it here.
Schedule: Weekly
3. Organize. You know how things get really outta hand at the house? It only gets messed up in the parts that you use. Yeah. Your computer does the same thing.
—Warning Technical Explanation ahead:
Here’s what happens: your computer stores files in “spots”. Lets say we have file “A”, file “B” and file “C”. Heres basically how your computer will store it: AABBBCCCC. Let’s say file “B” gets deleted. we now have AA CCCC. Now file “D” comes in. AADDDCCCCDD Notice the “D”s on the end? “D” couldn’t fit into the old “B” slot because the slot where “B” was, is too small.
NOW, every time your computer looks for “D”. It has to get it from 2 different places. Imagine that on a GRANDER scale. That’s called Fragmentation. Luckily, Windows comes with a Defragmenter. It basically moves the files around so that we can have: AADDDDDCCCC. And everything is in one place, hence, defragmented. Whew. I need a diet coke.
—End boring explanation.
So, run the Defragmenter. It should be under Start > All Programs > Accessories > System Tools. Hit Analyze, Defrag. If you haven’t ran Defrag before, or if it’s been a long time, make sure you don’t need the computer for a while.
Schedule: Monthly, Weekly.
4. Pest Control. Get your self a good Anti-virus. There. That’s it. Run it. Often. Here are some good ones:
Symantec (Norton), McAfee, AVG, AVast! I have found that I like Norton the best. If it’s good enough for the Federal Government, it’s good enough for me.
Also, get yourself a Malware remover/scanner like Malwarebytes or Spybot: Search and Destroy.
Do yourself a favor. Don’t skimp out and buy something you’ve never heard of. Viruses often come from downloaded software. If you’re not sure, buy it at the store.
Schedule: It will run all the time.
This plan is the definition of basic, so if yours is more complex, awesome! Well, that’s it. If you do these things periodically as recommended, you will have to call me less often! -Steven
