How to Perform Routine Computer Maintenance

Does this sound familiar?

Slow, Not responding and overheating, and if you ask it too much at one time, it crashes.

Well, I'm talking about my previous experience with my previous PC. But it could also apply to your PC.

In this technical piece, I will walk you through some essential runtime maintenance on your PC so that you can keep it running as long as possible.

Software is improved yearly and most of these improvements require more resources. It may be memory, storage, graphics processors, or hard drive speed, but the more you ask of your computer, the older it will appear.

Just like a car, computers require regular maintenance. Otherwise, you will have to pay some computer repairer a hefty amount for something small or sell your PC to get a new PC.

I will be talking about free maintenance, although there are good paid apps out there that help you in maintaining your PC.

Clean It

Modern PCs come with few thumbscrews under the hood. making it easier to open the hood of your PC. Before opening up your PC ensure you turn off your computer and unplug all the cables, especially the power cable. Opening the hood of your PC, you will definitely be amazed by the electronic gizmos. I'm pretty sure you will notice your motherboard or fan full of dust, it depends on the last time you cleaned your PC.

Your computer has a fan that blows air across the motherboard to keep the components from overheating. The fan will also suck in any nearby dust, which will coat the components, defeating the fan's purpose.

The build up of dust can negatively impact your PC's performance in two main ways: it causes the components of your PC to retain heat and it makes it more difficult for the internal fans to dissipate heat from the system, thereby decreasing the efficieny of the entire system.

The best way to deal with it is to get a small vacuum made for this purpose. You can also use a blower, but not one with too much force, and you need to make sure any canned air is safe for electronics. Well and if you also do not have a PC Vacuum cleaner, you can hit me up and I'll provide PC cleaning services.

Reboot It

Rebooting can solve a lot of problems. Make it a habit to reboot at least once a week. Rebooting clears your PC's memory, shuts down random programs that might be running in the background, and solve memory leaks. Just do it!

Keep the System Updated

Windows updates have gotten a bad rap over the years, and with good reason. They have been notorious for releasing buggy updates. But these days they are much better. Update your system!

Computer Cleaners

Most antivirus software offer computer cleaning alongside with malware and virus protection. They do not do things that you can't do for yourself entirely, it is only that the process is automated. You can check out the following free computer cleaning softwares CCleaner and Glary Utilities

Take Out the Trash

Uninstall old programs, delete unused data, including emails, and clean your disk. Again Glary and CCleaner have utilities to help with this, but whether you use them or Windows utilities, you have to make some decisions on your own.

If you are running a local email client like Outlook, those files can get massive. Go through your email and delete things you don't need, especially those with large attachments.

Go to programs in the control panel to look for programs you don't need and delete them. Many you won't recognize, and you won't be able to uninstall them. These are apps that came with or are part of Windows.

Clean Your Disk

Programs and websites leave a lot of crap behind on your computer. If you are using a program like CCleaner or Glary, they can take care of this. If not, you need to do it yourself. How often will depend on your use. Or just make this part of your weekly maintenance. Under Settings/System/Storage, you can conigure Storage Sense to handle this for you.

Defrag your Hard Drive

If you have an SSD, you no longer need to defrag it. Well if your PC has HDD take heart and lets defrag our PC. After doing a cleanup, run Defragment and optimize your hard drive. This can be a long process, so run it overnight if you haven't done it in a while.

Check your Startup Programs

Right click the status bar at the bottom of the screen and click on Task Manager or using the keyboard shortcut, Esc + Shift + Ctrl. This utility is good for a lot of things. Click on the Startup tab at the top and check all the programs in the list. Disable start up programs that start up on boot up, that you need.

Is that All?

No. But it is most of it, 'A slow computer has a negative effect on efficiency, productivity and income. Invest in IT!'