Welcome fellow readers to another edition of El Toro’s Tech Blog.
With today’s blog, I will be doing 2 parts. This edition will cover Performing Simple Maintenance on your Windows Computer, and part 2 will cover Apple Computers.
Let’s get started.
One of the biggest things I hear at work is “my computer is so slow and it won’t work” or “what can I do to make it move a little faster?”
As the jokester than I am, I always encourage my users to not forget to feed the hamster inside because he is always running on that little wheel. I had to stop telling that joke because people actually started to believe me.
The one thing I recommend people NOT to do is download these programs advertised on TV like My Clean PC, or anything similar to that. It really doesn’t clean your PC but rather give you more headaches than you deserve thus forcing you to purchase software that would potentially make it worse. Your Windows computer has what it needs to keep things running well and there are free things to get to make it even better. Don’t worry, I will discuss in details =)
Windows Updates - The most important thing to always do is make sure you are installing your windows updates. I cannot stress this enough. Windows Update makes sure that your computer has the latest drivers, service packs, security updates installed to ensure your computer will continue to work and prevent anything malicious from doing harm to your programs when installing the security updates. For Windows Vista users and above, just do a search for “Windows Update” and click on it to let it run. You can even schedule a time to run and install the updates automatically. When doing this, it will require your computer be on during that time and this will only install critical updates and security patches. For the other updates, you will need to manually run it. For Windows 8 users, the search is the same, just located in a different spot.
Sadly for my Windows XP users, it is time to either upgrade or purchase a new PC. Microsoft will officially cut off support, service and security updates as of April 8th 2014 for Windows XP . You will still be able to use it but since there won’t be any more updates available, this can leave your system vulnerable to attacks on your system.
Anti-Virus (and updates) – Every Windows computer should have an antivirus program. Windows has more of a chance getting hit with a virus, spyware and/or malware. One of the best Antivirus tools out there is also one of my favorites, avast!. Rated the “World’s most-trusted antivirus” (available for Windows and Apple computers as well as Android devices), Avast! has a very easy to use interface that makes updating it so easy. With a simple click, it updates and keeps you protected. Once installed, it will run in the background protecting and alerting you of potentially anything it catches. They have the free version and paid versions which offer extra protection so it is up to you what to get. As long as you have an antivirus program installed, you’re golden.
Back Up your Computer – Newer versions of Windows have a handy backup tool called “Backup and Restore” (you can find this by searching for that term). This is important to note in order for you to perform a good back up on your computer, you need to have an external hard drive connected to the computer. Making a backup onto DVD/CDs is time consuming and you are better off just clicking through and letting it do its magic on its own. Here is the rule of thumb. Your external hard drive must be at least double the space of your computer. Meaning, if your desktop computer has 500 GB of hard disk space, you need to do your backup on an external hard drive with at least 1 TB (1000 GB) of space. You can sort of get away with using a 750 GB drive but you will run out of space quickly so I wouldn’t advise doing that. The reason for doing this is just simple. If your hard drive dies, you lose everything on it. If you have a backup of it, you just get the internal hard drive replaced and restore the backup you made and you are up and running again in no time! There really isn’t any need to purchase any software for this so you can use Microsoft backup feature.
Clean Temporary Files – The definition of temporary: lasting for only a limited period of time; not permanent”. Apparently someone didn’t tell the temp files that. They stay on your computer and don’t disappear. The more stuff you do on your computer, the more temp files appear and remain permanent. There is a solution to cleaning these and it comes in the form of another cool free app called CCleaner. Just launch the app, follow the prompts and let it do its magic. If you want more advanced features, they offer paid versions of the program. If you were to purchase it, I promise you it’s worth it.
Remove Programs You Don’t Use – When you purchase a computer, 9 times out of 10 there is crap you won’t need or ever use. Just search for Windows’ Add/Remove Programs, select the program you don’t want and click on Uninstall. You will regain space on your computer as well as make it run a bit faster. Use Google as your best reference to find out what something installed on your computer is first before you start uninstalling stuff unless you know for sure what you don’t need.
This might seem like a lot to do. The good thing about the Windows Updates, Antivirus and CCleaner, you can set it up to run a schedule update/clean and it will do it at the time specified so there really isn’t too much intervention from you. I recommend doing this at least once a month, or if you use your computer a lot like I do, then once every 2 weeks. Set a calendar entry to remind you.
You do this, you will begin to notice an improvement on your computer and extend the life of it as well.
That’s it for today. Stay tuned for Part 2, where I will cover what you need to do on a Mac. Until then, Be Safe! =)
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