5 tips for effective computer maintenance
Consumer negligence is the number one cause of slow computers. Poorly performing components, spyware and other issues contribute to the speed of your computer, but it’s you, the user, that has the biggest effect on how your computer performs.
The casual user assumes that computers look after themselves and don’t need any maintenance, but as the more frequent user knows, that’s simply not the case. There are many ways you can keep your computer running smoothly and below is a list of 5 of the best.
1. Take good care of your drives.
Your hard drive is the single most important part of your computer. It’s the place where all of your family pictures, spreadsheets and all kinds of data is stored. You wouldn’t want to lose any of this information so it’s inoprtant to look after the health of yoru hard drives.
The disk defragment tool is a good place to start. It cleans up your drive by finding all the stray file fragments and consolidating it to take up less space. By doing this you’re relieving the pressure on other components that have to search for these stray fragments by making it easier for them to find what they’re looking for. This, in turn, makes the process a little quicker.
Scandisk is also a tool that should be used frequently. If your computer often locks up and has to be restarted before it’ll let you do anything, the chances are that your hard drive contains errors. Scandisk will find these errors and correct them.
Scandisk and disk defragments should be carried out at least once a month for maximum effect. The more often you do it, the less time it takes the next time you do it.
2. Don’t let your hard drives fill up
As mentioned in point 1, a healthy hard drive is essential to a smooth running computer. It’s thus very important that you leave some free space on there. It’s generally though that around 500mb is the minimum amount of space you should have on your drives at any one time, but I tend to err on the side of caution and leave a good couple of GB’s free. The reason why you should leave free space is because Windows can get bloated and clogged up if you let your hard drive fill to capacity and start dumping data. If you leave plenty of space then you won’t be at risk of losing data and it will also be able to locate files and folders more easily.
3. Never turn off your computer until Windows has shut down.
It can be tempting at times when shut down is taking longer than usual to simply turn off your computer using the power switch. However, the few seconds saved by switching it off in this way can mean hours of agony the next time you turn it back on. Windows can lose files or find that they’ve been corrupted, and you could lose files or folders just because you were too impatient to wait a few more seconds. In severe (but rare) cases you can even cause permanent damage to your drives.
4. Backup, then backup again
You know how frustrating it is when you’re halfway through that essay and Microsoft Word crashes and you lose all your hard work? Imagine that happening to tens or hundreds of files when your hard drive fails! That’s why you should always, always backup your work and then back it up again. If there’s something you can’t afford to lose, make a copy straight away. Put it on an external hard drive, your slave drive, cd’s, flash drive, anything, just so long as you avoid that soul destroying moment when you realize all of your hard work has been undone by your relucatance to spend a little time backing up your files.
5. Get rid of unused programs
I bet there are at least a dozen programs on your computer that you never ever use. Why are they still on your system? What purpose are they serving? Other than bloating your registry and slowing down your computer, they’re not serving any purpose, so why not simply uninstall them? It’s simple to go. Go to your control panel and find the Add/Remove Programs section and it’s pretty self explanatory from there. Just find the programs you no longer use and click Remove. Simple as that, although for a more effective uninstall use a program like CCleaner to clean your registry thoroughly.
No related posts.
Filed Under: Tips and Tricks
