Ten Ways to Maintain Your Computer

Keeping your computer running smoothly requires that you do a little housecleaning once
in a while. Here's a list of tasks to help you get started:

1. Keep all of your working files in one folder. The My Documents folder is offered by Windows expressly for this purpose. The benefits of keeping all your files in one place are multiple. One, you know where all your files are, two, it's easy to back them all up at once, and three, your machine will run faster.

2. Don't put your personal files on the root of the C: drive. If you store a large number of files on the C: root folder you could corrupt your disk file table which could lead to a "NTLDR is missing" error message when you boot the computer. Very bad. If you have personal files on the C: drive now, move them to the My Documents folder.

3. Uninstall programs that you aren't using. But don't just delete the program. Remove it correctly so it won't cause Windows errors. Go to Start, Control Panel, Add or Remove, Programs. Find the program you want to remove in the list, and click the Remove button.

4. Store your hardware drivers and purchased software installer files off your hard drive. A flash drive works great for this purpose.

5. When you download a zipped file and expand it, delete the original zip file. You'll never remember later why you kept it.

6. If you aren't already using one, get a good surge protector and plug your computer and peripherals (printers, scanners) into it. During bad lightening storms, I unplug my computer and peripherals just to be safe.

7. Practice safe computing. Don't accept software or downloads for which you didn't ask. Delete any suspicious email without opening it. And even if the email came from your best friend, don't open any email attachments with the following extensions: * .exe, .com, .vbs, .bat, .mdb, .reg, and .js.

8. Clean up your temp files, your temporary internet files, and other junk files about once a month. To do this easily, you can download my favorite program for cleaning, CCleaner from ccleaner.com. Be sure to read the complete instructions from the associated wiki.

9. Ensure you have the latest Windows updates installed. Go to Internet Explorer, Tools, and Windows Update. Click on the Custom button. (I always use the Custom button so I can check what's going to be installed before it gets installed). Windows update may ask you to download and install the latest version of itself. Go ahead and do that, then click Close when it's finished, and then Continue. It will then scan again for real updates and offer those. Choose which updates you want to install. Uncheck the ones you don't want to install.

10. Clean out your email, paying special attention to your Inbox and Sent box. The easiest way I've found is to sort your email box by size of the message, and delete the largest unneeded emails first.

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