Don’t work hard to maintain a healthy computer (part 1)

This begins the first of several posts I’ll do that will help you keep your PC uncluttered, keep its performance maximized, and keep the bad guys out. Anyone who has a PC and doesn’t mind rolling up her sleeves and spending a little time should find this information useful.

Have something you want to add to the mix? Please reply to this (or subsequent) posts, or drop me a private line, and I'll include it in a future blog post!

Waxing nostalgic

Long gone are the days when installing and updating software required floppy disks, constant attention, and the apparent need for us to sit and stare at the little progress meter as it marched its dutiful way toward 100% completion. Due to some very recent frustrations with two of Symantec’s products, I am tempted to say that nothing has changed; but that’s really true, or fair. Things have changed, and there are ways for us to maximize our precious time, while minimizing the time we spend staring at progress meters.

Know what tools you already have

While I can’t speak specifically to Apple computer users (I ‘grew up’ with PCs, and have made my living from them in various ways), I hope that a few of these tips will help both PC and Apple users alike.

All versions of the Windows® Operating System (OS) ship with various utilities. Utilities are small programs that are generally designed to do one task, or one type of task. Because of that, they have a small footprint (take up little room), and usually do a good job. This small (free!) collection of important and useful utilities could save you money—you might not have to buy third party programs. If you use them regularly, they will definitely save you some grief.

Here’s an example. I began drafting this blog post on our desktop machine. Its operating system is Windows® XP Media Center Edition. This version of the Windows OS shipped with all sorts of free utilities. For the most part, they can be found by click the Start button, choosing All Programs, and then choosing Accessories. There are all sorts of goodies there, including sub-menus full of even more goodies. If you take the time to explore the System Tools sub-menu, you will uncover several very useful utilities. Here’s a short list of the ones I use most, and what they do:

Disk Cleanup

• As the name suggests, this allows you to get rid of unwanted ‘stuff’. Such stuff might include temporary Internet files that clutter up your computer, program setup files you may no longer need, etc. The program starts by running a fairly quick scan on the drive you select, and presents you with a dialog box where you can choose what to keep and what to get rid of.

Disk Defragmenter

• As we routinely create new files, save or delete them, or (yes) change existing files, our drives become fragmented. To us as users, until system performance is degraded the fragmentation is almost entirely transparent. The OS figures everything out for us. But in time, as files and parts of files get flung all over the drive, you will notice that opening or accessing certain files has turned into a slightly more sluggish process. By then, it’s beyond the time that you should have defragmented (defragged) your disk drive(s). My personal recommendation is that you do not defrag “recovery” drives (they’re usually plainly labelled). One other recommendation is in order: run this at night, or, schedule it to run later, when you don’t need full computing power.

System Restore

• This, IMHO, is one of the most critical utilities we have on Windows OS-based computers. It has helped me out of jams many times. In brief, here’s how it works. Periodically, the OS takes a snapshot of your system. These are called “restore points” (or “system checkpoints”). This is a very good thing! If, one day after you install a program, or screen saver, or another cute little utility or program you know little about—and if your computer ceases to run as it used to, or almost ceases to run entirely—you will be ever so happy you knew about System Restore. As a blog post might not be the place to cover this in detail, I suggest you take a look at Windows Help file on this, or drop me a line and I'll send you a quick paragraph on how to get started.

There are many other useful utilities that ship with the Windows OS, and most (but not all) can be found in the Accessories menu.

The second post in this series will appear in a couple of weeks...

Comments

[Manjeeth]

Its very true that many users dont know their utility tools. I have friends who havent heard of the disk defragmenter or cleaup tool. Personally, to the tool in Vista, I prefer a third party automatic defragmenter which also gives me a good progress report.

[Rob Neilly]

I appreciate Manjeeth's comment, and because I'm a 'collector' of software and technology solutions, invite him to write me offline with the product he uses!

[Terry MacRae]

Thanks for bringing up this topic. I've learned the hard way to be very conscientious about my PC. Im fact, I've come to the place of not relying on Microsoft Windows to maintain my computer. I use free utility programs such as CCleaner (for disk cleanup) and O&O Defrag. I've found that they both do a much better job than Windows, and I use both at least once a week.

[Rob Neilly]

This is *great* Terry. Thank you for your comments, and for letting us in on two non-Microsoft products that help keep your PC in shape. I'm going to add those to my list, and I'll probably end up adding them to my personal collection of utilities.

Rob