Basic Computer Maintenance everyone should do!
Computers can bog down over time. Some simple maintenance every other week or once a month that should take about 10 -30 minutes (depending on your programs installed), can be performed at any level of computer knowledge and will keep your computer running smothly. This little guide and 2 downloads should keep your computer running smothly.
Remove programs you no longer use or know about
Over time you may have installed games or utilities that you forgot about or no longer use. Why waste the space? Go to your Control Panel--> Add\Remove programs and uninstall anything you no longer use. Occasionally you will find a toolbar or other item you never knew was there!
Clean your Hard Drive of Unneeded files
One of the biggest problems is hard drive useage. The hard drive has more moving parts then any other in your computer, and is constantly writing, erasing and reorganizing files. Because of this you want to clean your hard drive. A great tool for this is CCleaner (download latest version from File Hippo). Simply open CCleaner and it should open to the Cleaner section. Click "Run Cleaner" and wait. That's all.
It is a very good and safe program, it has never damaged any computer I ever ran it on.
Remove invalid registry entries
The registry is not a place even an average computer user to be messing with. The beauty is that CCleaner has a safe registry cleaner built right in. Of the 4 icons on the left Click on the registry one
then click on "Scan for issues" at the bottom left.
Then click "Fix Selected issues" at the bottom Right.
Always back up the registry when it asks you!
You should do that over again till you get a "Clean report" (no issues).
That's all there is to the registry cleaning.
Startup Items
Now here is a major culprit to slow start ups.
See all those little icons in the lower right corner of the screen? (by the clock). All of those are being loaded at startup, and they are not all of them, either. They also use up memory just sitting there.
Removing this carefully takes a bit more knowledge but you can do it.
First off, if you know what these items in the tray are and do not need them running, you can either right click an icon and look for options or a "run with Windows" option. Otherwise, you can double click any icon to open the program and look for options from there. Some are easy and common. Quicktime, AOL and RealPlayer are good examples of items that do not need to be there.
Others, like SunJava, or your Anti-Virus, or wireless utility are ones that should stay loading at startup.
As luck would have it CCleaner has a startup manager too!
Click on tools (the wrench) and then Startup.
You can delete any unneeded items there. Be careful as there is no back up for this. So either Google the program or Email me if you want to know what an item is for. Because the startup loads drivers and some programs you may need. Be careful removing things you are unsure of.
Defragment you hard drive
After all that garbage has been removed it is a good idea to defragment your hard drive. Over time, writing and erasing data from your hard drive makes the information get (fragmented) spread out all over the place. Now your hard drive has to jump and skip from section to section to read one file which will slow it down considerably.
Running a good defragmenter puts them all back in a "logical" place so it should help your computer to run smoother and faster when reading & writing to and from your hard drive.
No, CCleaner will not work this time around. No, the windows tool is not all that good. I would not suggest you rely on that one. However something is better then nothing in this instance.
A really good one is IObit SmartDefrag. Download it from Majorgeeks.com.
Open it and click "Analyze", when it is done with that click "Go". Then wait. That's all. IObit will also defrag when you are not using the hard drive directly. this should, over time, cut down on the time it takes to perform a full defrag operation.
That's all!
As you preform these functions over and over on a regular basis the time it takes to run them will decrease. So it will not seem like such an arduous task each time. And you will definitely see a benefit in how your computer runs.
Wireless Networks!
They can be tricky things, but they can be oh so helpful when you have one that works well. Do you live in an apartment? Do you know if your neighbors are using your internet?? I know a few people who live in appartments and use their neighbors connection without them knowing it.
Take just a few simple steps to ensure that you are the only one using your internet connection.
Start with opening your Internet. Internet Explorer or Firefoxin the address bar at the top where you would normally type in "www.microsoft.com" type in one of the following sets of IP address numbers;
192.168.0.1
~or~
192.168.1.1
The latter is the more common one. after you enter that in hit "enter" you should be prompted for a user name and password. Most likely it will be User Name: admin ; and a password of "password". To be certain look on the bottom of your router the default UN and PW should be listed there.
Once you are in the User Interface find the "Wireless Settings" (or some veriation of it) and click on it. On that page you will see something with the word "Security" on it. Click on it. (Start with Basic settings if your router breaks it down into Basic and Advanced)On that page you should see references made to WEP or WPA. Personally I would go with WPA if at all possible.
WPA is more secure then WEP and you can pick an easy to remember password rather then using a long complicated key. If you have the option of using the "Pre-Shared Key" use that over any other type of authentication. Use ASCII for your password as opposed to Hexidecimal. Pick a password that is not easily guessed but easy to remember. (It is not often you will have to type it in to conect but of the few times you might you don't want to have to go searching for the password. Hint: your home phone number works great.
Encryption Algorithm: I could explain it; but it's not all that interesting...AES is better then TKIP, but not all laptops can use AES. If you are unsure about yours go with TKIP.
Hit "Apply" or "Ok" and the router will reset itself usually and if you were working from your Laptop you will loose connection to the router.
Open "Network Connections" from the Control Panel, right click on your "Wireless Network Connection" and click on View available wireless networks. When you click on your network name in the the list table, you will be prompted for the password you just created on the router. Enter it twice, and hit "Connect" or "OK" whichever you may have and that is it.
Your computer will now rememeber that password everytiome you open up the internet. Although it is rare, I have seen them "forget" from time to time, so that is why I said make the PW something you can remember.
If you need to dig a little deeper in how to do it, you can call me or you can Click here for my Blog and find more indepth instructions on how to use the WEP and others if you need to.
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