There are many reasons why you should service your computer regularly. The most common of these is to bring the computer back to its original speed, allowing you to get the most out of your computer. It is important to take a preventative stance with your computer maintenance because if you don’t stay on top of things, you may find that your computer fails and you could lose all your data at the same time, very sad.

There are many companies which offer you a computer tune up and service of your computer for a cost. There are an equal amount of companies which will offer you software at a cost to bring your machine performance back to what it should be(none of which I have found to be fantastic). I don’t like spending money when I don’t have to and while servicing your PC can be time consuming, it should not put a dent in your pocket. You should only have to service your computer once a year, but it is good to set up some preventative tools in the background to make it a quick and simple process.

This article will explore the steps required to allow your computer to perform at its optimum. We will cover the following:

1. Backing up your system
2. Virus and Spy-ware removal
3. Uninstalling unused/unwanted programs
4. Clearing out unwanted files
5. Limiting programs that load during startup
6. Tidying up your Desktop and Start Menu

This article is a brief rundown of each of the sections above. Save yourself the money and do it yourself.

1. Backing up your system

Before you go through your system and delete any unwanted files, it is very sensible/crucial to backup your system. This is something that you should do routinely throughout the year. You have a many options as to where you can backup your data such as a thumb drive, CD/DVD drive or another hard drive.

While you probably won’t need to restore any of these backups, if you come across any major problems you can completely reinstall your operating system and be comfortable you have all your files ready to bring back into your system. 

The following need to be backed up

• Your Documents (Generally copy your “My Documents” folder but if you have documents in other locations, copy them also)
• Your Email (Depending on your mail package, in Outlook 2003, In the file menu is an “import/export” option)
• Your Registry (Click “Start”, Select “Run”, Type “Regedit”, There is an option in the file menu to export)
• Your Favourites (In Internet Explorer, the File menu offers an export option. Firefox offers export when you select “Organise Bookmarks”)

Once you have all these files backed up, you are ready to proceed on to Virus/Spy-ware removal.

2. Virus and Spy-ware Removal

Viruses and spyware are common on all Windows machines. You can get viruses through email, surfing the web, downloading software or even being attached to a network. Some are more harmful than others. Virus scanners slow down a computer but are a crucial piece of software for almost all computers.

If you have virus removal software on your computer, make sure that it is up to date. If you don’t have anti-virus software, download AVG Antivirus from Grisoft. This antivirus package is regularly updated (not as frequently as many commercial antivirus solutions), and it’s free. When you install it, ensure that you update the definitions. It is normally fairly obvious with any antivirus package how to get the latest updates.

Some viruses cannot be removed by standard antivirus software so get the latest Stinger application from Mcafee. You hopefully will not find any results from this but if you do, you will be happy you had it as the viruses stinger finds are nasty.

Spy-ware often finds its way onto our systems and can be a pain to remove. I have not found a single package that catches everything but in combination, you can get the job done.

• Download AVG Anti Spyware, free trial from Grisoft
• Download Adaware, free from Lavasoft
• Download Spybot Search & Destroy, free from Safer-Networking

Ensure that you install and update them all but don’t run them yet. They work well together to get all the nasties that can get onto your computer.

As some spyware and viruses load up as the computer starts we need to restart your computer and Load Windows in safe mode by pressing F8 as your computer boots, just prior to seeing the Windows XP screen.

Run each of the above applications individually and remove any nasties these programs come across.

Restart your computer and you should be free of any viruses and spyware.

3. Uninstalling unused or unwanted software

This is important to do as having programs installed slows down your computer, and if you have lots of programs you don’t use installed, you are wasting valuable resources.

This is fairly simple to do. The best way to do this is to go into your control panel and select “Add/Remove programs”. You are presented with a list of all the programs installed on your computer. Select remove next to the programs you don’t want.

If there are programs that you are unsure about, because you don’t know what they do, search the title in google and check if it is necessary.

If you have programs that are not in the list installed, you can go through your start menu and find the uninstallers for each application.

DO NOT go into windows explorer and delete the folders of programs as this leaves behind a very messy registry.

You should now have only the applications you want or need on your computer. It is worth uninstalling programs as you realise you don’t need them but if you do it once a year, you will notice quite an increase in performance.

4. Clearing out unwanted files

In the day to day use of your computer, temporary files are stored all over the place. Every time you visit a website or download an application, it is then stored on your computer. It can get quite tedious and time consuming to find all these files individually. Get yourself ATF-Cleaner from atribune. It’s a freebie.

This program lets you tick the box of what you want to remove such as “Temporary internet files” and looks after the rest for you. Makes this task a whole lot simpler.

I have seen many computers in my time as a computer tech where the recycling bin had thousands of files in and they had been there for multiple years. It’s a bad habit. I even came across someone who stored their documents in the recycling bin, but that is a different story.

5. Limit the programs that load at startup.

Over time, you get more and more programs thinking they are important enough for you to want to use them each time you restart your computer. Some of them are such as anti-virus or mouse/keyboard applications, others chew away at your resources and slow your computer down.

There are multiple places that the computer can tell programs to load up from. The most popular way for honest programs to launch themselves is by placing themselves in the startup folder in your start menu. It is important as you remove these applications form the various places listed below, that you know what they are. Some will not be descriptive but will be crucial to your computer running correctly. If you don’t know what it is, google it!

You can explore the startup folder and delete the entries in there that you don’t want.

The applications when loaded will often show an icon in the bottom right of your taskbar. You can normally go into the options of these applications by right clicking on them and find an option tick-box to “Start with windows” or a phrase similar. Untick the box and you won’t see it again. If you change your mind later, you can generally load the program from the start menu and go back into the options to allow it to launch at startup again.

The other main place that programs can be launched from is the registry. If you don’t know what the registry is or are uncomfortable fiddling with it, skip to the next section. Get this wrong and you can break your computer proper.

IF you don’t know how to load regedit, you probably shouldn’t try this. The two keys below both have a list of programs that load during startup. Delete the keys for the programs you don’t want to load, ensuring you know what they are before removing them.

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run

HKEY_CURRENT_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run

Once you quit regedit, restart your computer and see the improvement.

6. Tidying up your Desktop and Start Menu

Now is a good time to tidy up all your desktop icons. Remove any documents from the desktop and put them into your “My Documents” folder. Put icons for launching applications you rarely use in the Recycle Bin. I prefer to have a completely blank desktop. I have seen some computers where the icons don’t fit the screen. This is really bad form. Please don’t be a victim of desktop untidiness.

I like my start menu to be sharp and to the point. A lot of applications install icons for manuals and uninstallers but there is other ways to get to these than the start menu. They also have their own folders. I like to clear things up and cull all these folders away. For example, on the right is my games folder. There is no help files or confusing items to get in the way of what I want to do.

I have created multiple folders and removed all the old ones. Titles of the folders include “System Utilities”, “Applications” and “Internet”.

Some folders such as Microsoft office still require their own folder but I place my folder into the applications folder. It is a lot tidier.

You have just about completed your computer Tune Up and Service. Which leads me on to part 7.

7. Some Extra Bits

1. It’s nice to tidy up the folders on your computer every now and again. “My Documents” can get quite messy as we quickly save files into them when we are in a hurry. Take some time to file them away nicely and make folders descriptive. With thousands of files, spending a day to tidy it up can save you more than that in the long run as you search for files.

2. De-fragmenting hard drives is not as important as it used to be as NT File-System manages your drives much better than the older FAT type. It is worth doing occasionally though. To do this, right click on “My Computer” and select manage, then go into disk management. Right click on the drive and select Defragment.

3. Go into your control panel and open up the security centre. Ensure that your virus scanner and firewall are working.

4. Install Update Checker from filehippo.com and get the latest versions of all your shareware applications you still have on your computer.

5. Turn your computer off and vacuum inside the case. Ensure that all fans are still running and it is tidy.

You have now saved yourself an estimated $70. Well done!

I hope that this has been helpful for you and that your computer is now running well. Please check out some of my other How-To’s at www.inspectmygadget.com. Happy Computing!