PC Maintenance
As most of us know computers tend to get clogged up over time causing them to slow down. To help with this problem some simple maintenance once a month will keep your computer running smoothly. Below is a simple five point guide with a few downloads that all computer users should do.
Remove programs you no longer use.
Over time, you may have installed games or utilities that you forgot about or no longer use which take up space. It is always best to keep as much space available on your computer as possible. Go to your control panel, Add\Remove programs (or Programs and Features in Vista) and uninstall anything you no longer use.
Cleaning your hard drive of unneeded files:
One of the biggest problems is hard drive use. Your hard drive has more moving parts then any other in your computer and is constantly adding, deleting and reorganising files. Because of this, it is important to clean your hard drive. A great tool for this is CCleaner
It is a very safe tool and should not have any issue with your computer.
Remove invalid registry entries:
Next up is the registry. The registry does get large and can contain many invalid references. The registry however, is not an area for even the average computer user to be playing around in. The good news is CCleaner has a safe registry cleaner built in, so why not clean out old, invalid entries?
Click the issues button.
Click scan for issues.
Click fix selected issues.
Thats it, you are done, a safe, fast registry clean.
Startup items:
This is one of the main culprits for slowing up your computer. All the icons in the lower right corner of your screen are all being loaded on startup and result in having to wait to use your computer after startup. They also use up memory just sitting there.
If you know what these items are and do not need them running, you can either right click an icon and look for options or a “run with Windows” option. Otherwise, you can double click any icon to open the program and look for options from there.
CCleaner also has a startup manager. Click tools, then startup. You can delete any unneeded items from there. Be careful, there is no backup, so look up the program on Google if you want to know what an item is for. Because the startup loads drivers and some programs you may need, be careful removing items you are unsure of.
Defragment your hard drive
Now that you have removed everything you don’t need, you have defragmented files all over your hard drive. Once you have “defragged” your drive your files are now stored away neatly and tidily making them easier and quicker to find.
Microsoft includes a disk defragmentor, but it is widely known that it is not very good. Luckily, quite a few free alternatives are available and two of them are below:
IObit SmartDefrag is a newer, free program that works well:
MyDefrag is a simple one click defragmention:
The information above has been sourced from Major Geeks.com
