PC Regular Maintenance

It never ceases to amaze me how many people have PC problems and don't know what to do about it. I reckon 70% of personal PC's out there in the average home are in some way or another a mess.

You should really aim at doing a monthly routine to keep your computer free of nasties and also up-to-date on those ever so frequent Windows patches. As these patches occur on the 2nd Tuesday of every month I think it is a good idea to do this maintenance a week or so later. So, aim for the 3rd Tuesday of each month or there abouts. That way if there has been any patches that went wrong then Micro$oft has had a week to fix them.

I think the following steps should go a long way towards maintaining a leaner, cleaner, meaner computer without over doing it.

I use Firefox and Thunderbird from Mozilla Organization as my browser and e-mail clients respectively. I use them because they are high on features and security. So, I am assuming that you use the same. If you don’t then you should. If you don't believe me then do some research out there on the "net" for yourself. I am also considering that you are using Windows XP SP2 (Service Pack 2).

One thing to ALWAYS rememeber when you are working with a PC; be logical and use common sense and quite often you will not create a problem in the first place.

The following is an idea for a once per month maintenance program that you can do yourself. I recommend that you also stay with the order as listed below:

1. Delete all cookies. But remember that cookies often store password and user information so make sure that you keep a separate record of such data. To do this open Firefox and go to Tools → Options → Privacy and then click on the Clear button beside the Cookies title.

2. Delete internet cache. To do this open Firefox and go to Tools → Options → Privacy and then click on the Clear button beside the Cache title.

3. Delete all Temporary Internet Files (Internet Explorer files if you’ve used it) and Recycle Bin. You can do that by clicking on Start → All Programs → Accessories → System Tools → Disck Cleanup . It will then take some time to calculate the capacity of the cleanup. Once it is complete make sure that only Temporary Internet Files and Recycle Bin are checked. Then click OK, confirm the action and the cleaning process will begin.

4. Delete all Prefetch files. Go to My Computer and double click on Local Disk (C:), then double click on the Windows folder and then double click on the Prefetch folder. Left click on the first file and then hold down the "Shift" key and then hit the "End" key. All files in that folder should now be highlighted. Now hit the "Del" key and confirm the deletion.

5. Now it is time to reboot before we go on.

6. Run all spywares and clean out the crap but remember to do an update on each beforehand. I use Ad-Aware, Spybot Search & Destroy, Micro$oft Antispyware, CWShredder, Spyware Blaster and Trojan Defence Suite installed AND up-to-date.

7. Reboot.

8. Run HijackThis, review its log file and action where necessary. This is optional but it will capture critical data about your PC and what it is doing. If you are not sure then you can go to a forum site such as CastleCops and look for similar configurations.

9. Check out your Firewall program and remove any entries that look odd. If you are not sure what it is then generally you can remove it because the next time the program tries to access the Internet then your Firewall will ask you what you want to do with it.

10. Reboot.

11. Windows Update.

12. Reboot if there was something new.

13. Antivirus update and a complete virus scan of your hard drive

14. Reboot and enjoy.

Every 1-3 months, depending on your usage, I recommend that you do a defragementation of your hard drive. You can do that by clicking on Start → All Programs → Accessories → System Tools → and then Disk Defragmentation.

I hope that helps.

Albyxx

P.S. My Notebook PC and the majority of my software is in Brazilian Portuguese so I appologise for any discrepency in the translation of texts used above.