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Keeping your computer up-to-date
Just as you would change the oil in your car or take it for an annual safety inspection, your personal computer (PC) needs regular maintenance. Regular use of the following tools can keep your computer in shape. The information provided here is for Microsoft Windows users, however most operating systems include various tools to keep your computer running at peak performance. Consult your user guide for further details.
Restarting your computer
It may not seem necessary to shut down or restart your computer, but doing so refreshes the computer’s available memory, as well as allowing software updates to take effect. If you’re having difficulty with a software program, or connecting to the Internet, try shutting down your computer for at least 60 seconds. Restarting your computer refreshes the hardware and software to allow it to perform as you need.
Disk Cleanup
Disk Cleanup is an all-inclusive tool to help you scan for and safely delete temporary files from your computer. These files can range from temporary Internet files to files you’ve moved to the Recycle Bin. To run Disk Cleanup, click the Start button, select Programs, select Accessories, select System tool, and click Disk Cleanup. Follow the on-screen instructions, or view the Disk Cleanup Help files for more information. We recommend running Disk Cleanup at least once a month.
Disk Defragmenter
Files on your hard drive are not always placed in sequential order. Files can be placed in any free space available on your hard drive. When the computer begins placing similar files in random locations on your hard drive, this is referred to as fragmenting. As your hard drive becomes more and more fragmented, it gets slower when accessing files. The Disk Defragmenter utility reorganizes the fragmented files, speeding up file access and freeing up space on your hard drive. Disable your screen saver and close any open programs, including anti-virus programs, before starting Disk Defragmenter. If you leave any programs open when Disk Defragmenter is running, it can prevent the defragmentation from completing. To defragment your hard drive, click the Start button, select Programs, select Accessories, select System Tools, and click Disk Defragmenter. Select the drive to defragment (in most cases this should be Drive C) and click Start or OK. If you’re running Disk Defragmenter for the first time, it may take several minutes to hours. You should see an improvement in the speed of your PC after running Disk Defragmenter.
Windows Update
The Microsoft Windows Update Website, located at http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com allows you to obtain and automatically install bug fixes and security updates for your operating system. New content is added regularly. You should visit Windows Update at least once a month. When you go to Windows Update, just follow the simple on-screen instructions to automatically download and install updates for your computer. And don’t forget, most anti-virus programs include auto-update features that will obtain the most recent virus information updates and protection. You should update your virus definitions around the same frequency that you visit Windows update. For more information, please consult the documentation provided by your anti-virus vendor.
Good start :P, but you seem to have forgotten something so many people have problems with, that generally cause their slowdowns anyway.
Spyware/Adware, people need to run regular scans with common software like Ad-Aware and Spybot.
Virus Scans, if this post is aimed at the average user, then I can assure you they use IE, and I am sure they’ve picked something up, be it virus or adware, best to do both types of scans weekly/monthly. (Or like me… last scan, I’d say was last October :P, but I recommend you do it more frequently.)
Since you are comparing this to cars, cars eventually parts replaced/upgraded. Added more RAM or a more powerful CPU can vastly improve your speeds.
Keeping along with the car theme, how about a new internet connection, just like taking a 190HP Engine and and putting in a 450HP Engine :P.
The last two aren’t as feasible as others, but you did say keep it running smooth :P.
Good job williamlee!
(You could even add a preventive section, like firewalls and such, keep it running smooth longer :P.)
williamlee wrote:Keeping your computer up-to-dateJust as you would change the oil in your car or take it for an annual safety inspection, your personal computer (PC) needs regular maintenance. Regular use of the following tools can keep your computer in shape. The information provided here is for Microsoft Windows users, however most operating systems include various tools to keep your computer running at peak performance. Consult your user guide for further details.
Restarting your computer
It may not seem necessary to shut down or restart your computer, but doing so refreshes the computer’s available memory, as well as allowing software updates to take effect. If you’re having difficulty with a software program, or connecting to the Internet, try shutting down your computer for at least 60 seconds. Restarting your computer refreshes the hardware and software to allow it to perform as you need.
Restarting your computer does not ‘refresh’ anything. When you shut down the computer, the memory (In this case – RAM), stops getting the refresh signal (electricity that keeps the memory addresses at either 0 or 1). When this stops the memory is instantly compromised and can no longer be trusted to hold the data that it once did. When the computer starts up, the BIOS POST runs a Write-Read test, in that it writes data to every memory address available, and then reads it back. This memory check is what insures that your memory isn’t corrupt, but it’s also what erases everything. The memory is not gone when the computer is powered off, that’s a myth.
Furthermore, current versions of Windows NT garbage collect quite efficiently. I don’t have issues keeping my desktop workstation up for over a month. I actually can’t even tell when the last reboot was, it works fine either way. Restarting is not necessary when one knows what they are doing, and are working with an Operating System that supports memory management and recovery. Take *nix OS for example, I have a system with 440+ days of uptime, it works constantly, 24 hours a day, and has been doing so at the same speed for over a year. Granted Windows isn’t nearly this good, but there is no reason to restart a system when it doesn’t require it. It’s actually worse for the hardware to stop and restart (Hard-Disks spinning down and throttling back up for example). Of course some of this doesn’t apply to Win9X, but nobody should be running a 8-9year old OS anyway.
Quote:Disk CleanupDisk Cleanup is an all-inclusive tool to help you scan for and safely delete temporary files from your computer. These files can range from temporary Internet files to files you’ve moved to the Recycle Bin. To run Disk Cleanup, click the Start button, select Programs, select Accessories, select System tool, and click Disk Cleanup. Follow the on-screen instructions, or view the Disk Cleanup Help files for more information. We recommend running Disk Cleanup at least once a month.
This is a tool that’s not to be abused. Internet Cache is there for a reason, to speed up things. When you hit a website like the bigblueball.com forums, you’re going to view a lot of the same images from page to page. The posting icons are all the same, for example. It would be incredibly foolish for your browser to download the same images over and over for each page load, that’d be an incredible waste of bandwidth. So modern browsers are more intelligent than that. They save the images and last-viewed documents so that you don’t need to waste time downloading them again. Clearing this out doesn’t really do anything, the browser (if the configuration is set) will only store a certain amount of data, once this limit is reached, the older or least used files will be deleted. Deleting them yourself doesn’t do anything other than waste more bandwidth.
Quote:Disk DefragmenterFiles on your hard drive are not always placed in sequential order. Files can be placed in any free space available on your hard drive. When the computer begins placing similar files in random locations on your hard drive, this is referred to as fragmenting. As your hard drive becomes more and more fragmented, it gets slower when accessing files. The Disk Defragmenter utility reorganizes the fragmented files, speeding up file access and freeing up space on your hard drive. Disable your screen saver and close any open programs, including anti-virus programs, before starting Disk Defragmenter. If you leave any programs open when Disk Defragmenter is running, it can prevent the defragmentation from completing. To defragment your hard drive, click the Start button, select Programs, select Accessories, select System Tools, and click Disk Defragmenter. Select the drive to defragment (in most cases this should be Drive C) and click Start or OK. If you’re running Disk Defragmenter for the first time, it may take several minutes to hours. You should see an improvement in the speed of your PC after running Disk Defragmenter.
The reason the disk becomes fragmented is not because the computer ‘places the files randomly,’ that’d be illogical and absurd. When you create a new file, the disk driver finds a place for it, then when data is saved to the disk, more data is saved at the position in front of the first. This is fine when files are only written once and never touched again. The problem comes in when you add more data to a file and there isn’t any free space directly adjacent to the originating data sector. The file now needs to be split up into two parts and stored in different locations. This is fine, but when the file is read back, the head on the disk needs to make an extra movement and the seek and access time goes up. This isn’t noticible at first, but over time it could build up. You won’t see a huge performance increase from this unless you’re using older file systems like FAT32 that are a bit more prone to fragmentation.
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