Computer Maintenance

Computer Maintenance is something most of us neglect until something goes wrong, but PCs (personal computers) have become an integral part of our lives to the point where we cannot imagine our lives without them in our homes, so taking care of them is very important.

However, there are some important steps with Computer Maintenance that we need to take if we hope to have a trouble free experience, we should be looking at things like a registry cleaner, anti virus software and anti spyware all of which we will come to later in this article.

We all tend to believe the average life of the computer in our home is about two to three years, but apart from us out growing the unit this should not be the case. The life of your computer depends a great deal on how your Computer Maintenance is carried out and how regular it is done.

There are some very basic Computer Maintenance we can do on a regular basis to help our PC's have a longer life by firstly using the tools already installed in the programs. These tools can be found by looking in ‘Accessories’ then ‘System Tools’ where you will find such things as ‘Disc Cleanup’ and Disc Defragmenter’

What to do on a daily basis:

From a Computer Maintenance point of view it is very important to keep your computer up-to-date with antivirus software and spyware software. This is a must if you wish to protect your computer from being destroyed by viruses or your personal information being stolen through spyware and hackers.

Apart from virus and spyware protection it is also important to install a registry cleaner which will clean the registry on a daily basis preventing your computer from slowing down due to unnecessary errors.

Computer Maintenance is not just about the computer alone but is also about your files and documents stored on it. It is very important to make a backup of all your files and documents, preferably on an external hard drive, and on a daily basis, all you will need to do is backup the files and documents used or created that day. By doing this you will only lose one days work should your computer unexpectedly crash.

If you don't have an external hard drive, you can carry out what’s called an incremental backup. You access this Backup utility by clicking on the start menu, then Accessories, System Tools and selecting Backup and Restore menu option.

What to do on a weekly basis:

It’s a challenge to keep Computer Maintenance up to date but if not carried out your computer becomes more prone to errors and crashing. This is why we need to take precautions in order to keep our computers running at their best. We know that spyware; viruses and other types of malware can infect our computers causing slowdown and errors to the point of developing what’s known as the "blue screen of death."

Apart from simply slowing down a computer, the wrong kind of spyware is able to read your personal information, like social security numbers and banking information right out of the computer's onboard memory.

Fortunately, most people are aware of this and therefore with your regular Computer Maintenance you should use a spyware cleaner regularly. Therefore, every week it is important to perform a full virus and spyware scan and again most of these types of applications can be scheduled to run automatically at a time you select.

Updates

One little known facility for your regular Computer Maintenance is that Microsoft have updates every second Tuesday of the month and it is a good idea to install these updates. Some of them are critical and some are fixes to problems reported by customers but by default, Windows will automatically want to install the critical updates.

Finally, one thing we always forget is that software drivers go out of date as manufacturers continue to upgrade their software. Drivers are the things that make your accessories work correctly such as printers, cameras, cd burners etc, etc. It is therefore important to make sure all your drivers are up to date and working correctly. This can be done manually by going to each manufacturer in turn and checking, or you can obtain Driver Update software to do it for you as part of your Computer Maintenance schedule which is much, much easier and more efficient.