It’s springtime! Time to pull out your cleaning supplies and spruce things up! No, not your house or your apartment, but your computer running any version of Microsoft Windows. Just like with your car or lawnmower, regular maintenance will go a long ways towards keeping your computer running efficiently.
If you’re like most people, chances are you’ve had your computer for quite some time and have never opened the case and looked inside. Well, now’s the time. If you have a desktop computer, take the case off. Notice all that dust that’s accumulated around the fan and other components. That dust acts as an insulator, causing heat buildup. Heat is your computer’s enemy. A system that runs cool runs longer. Purchase a can of compressed air and blow all that dust out of your computer. Make sure there’s nothing obstructing the vents on the case, and make sure the fan inside spins freely. Blow air through all of the vents on the computer, and in the drive bays as well. Once you’ve cleaned everything out you can put the case back on.
If you have a laptop computer, you don’t want to open the case and do that sort of cleaning. However, you can take the compressed air and clean out the vents under it. In addition you can blow the air across the keyboards.
Now you can clean your computer screen (laptop or desktop). Be careful cleaning it. Excess moisture can actually get under the LED panel and distort the screen. Don’t spray a cleaner directly on the screen. Your best option is to purchase cleaning cloths especially made for LED screens. (By the way, that’s also a great way to clean your large-screen TV!)
Nex it’s time to address the programs in your computer. Do you have anti-virus and anti-spyware programs installed? Do you trust them? Did you know that many so-called anti-virus programs actually act as back doors into your system, tracking your computer usage and reporting results back to spammers? They can even access your address book and target spam to your friends, relatives and business associates. The Computer Psychic recommends the free suite, Microsoft Security Essentials. This anti-virus/anti-spyware program is top rated by most review sites, updates its virus definition daily and is 100% free.
Next, remove unneeded files that are cluttering up your hard drive. The freeware program Ccleaner does an excellent job of this. Once you have Ccleaner installed, run it and click the Cleaner button. Select the types of files you want to be removed – here’s a screenshot of the file types I recommend removing.
Once the files are selected, click the Analyze button. After a few moments you’ll see a list of files the Ccleaner will remove. If you’re OK with this, simply click the Run Cleaner button to apply the changes.
While you have Ccleaner running, this is a good time to also optimize the Windows registry. The registry is a database that stores virtually everything Windows needs to “remember” in order to run correctly. Over time, as you install and uninstall (or even just use) applications, the registry can become cluttered with “orphan” entries that no longer pertain to anything valid. These orphan entries can – and do – slow down your system.
In Ccleaner, click the Registry button on the left. I suggest leaving all items in the Registry Integrity column checked, and click the Scan for Issues button. Once Ccleaner is done populating the list of issues, you can click the Fix Selected Issues button to remove these entries from the registry. After clicking that button, you’ll see an option to back up the current registry. It’s very important that you do this backup. This way, if anything vital is accidentally removed during the cleaning process, you can recover it by restoring the backup. After you’ve saved the backup file, simply click the Fix All Selected Issues button to finish.
Now take some time using some tools that are included right in Windows. The first is Checkdisk. This utility will analyze your computer’s hard drive, looking for and fixing any damaged sectors. A damaged sector is an area on your hard disk that is no longer able to be written to or read from. Too many damaged sectors can cause errors when saving your programs, or cause existing data not to be read. To run Checkdisk, first close all programs that are running, and disable any screen savers. Then do the following:
- Click on your Windows Start button and type CMD. (Windows XP users will need to click Start, then Run, and then type CMD.) Press the Enter key. This will open up a black command window.
- In the command window, type chkdsk /F and press Enter. Note, there’s a space between the k and the / character. Since Checkdisk can’t run while Windows is running, it will ask if you want it to run the next time Windows is restarted. Press Y for yes, and press the Enter key.
- Now restart your computer. Before Windows boots up, Checkdisk will run and automatically fix any errors. Any sectors that cannot be fixed will be marked unusable by the system so Windows won’t try to access these bad sectors. Once Checkdisk is complete, Windows will finish loading.
Now it’s time to run the Disk Defragmenter. When Windows writes data to the hard drive, it writes it to the first available spot on the disk. As you remove a program or file this leave a bit of empty space on the disk.
As you add and remove programs and save and delete files, Windows will write that data to the first available spot on the hard drive. Data that gets written to the disk becomes fragmented. That is, instead of all the data residing in contiguous sectors, the data will be written in the first available sector. If the data is larger than that sector, the operating system will continue to write in the next available sector, elsewhere on the disk. After time the data can become very fragmented – scattered all over the hard drive.
The Disk Defragmenter will re-write the data on your drive, all in contiguous blocks, thus speeding up data access and reducing stress on the hard drive. To run the Disk Defragmenter, click on your Windows Start button, then Accessories, System Tools and then Disk Defragmenter. Click on the Analyze button to determine the state of the hard drive. The program will tell you if the system needs defragmenting.
That’s it! Your computer is now all cleaned up for springtime! If you clean the computer twice a year and perform the other software tasks monthly, you can be assured that your computer will continue to run as desired.
This article is provided by Steve Smith, The Computer Psychic. All content is protected by applicable copyrights, and may not be reproduced without express consent of the author.
The information in this knowledge base article is provided “as-is” with no warranty, express or implied, as to the suitability or validity of its content. It is up to the reader of this article to determine if the steps outlined herein are appropriate for his or her use. As with all tasks on the computer, be sure to have a current backup of your data before proceeding.
