How to maintain your computer?

To ensure and protect the life of your computer, as well as optimizing the overall performance, you will need to maintain it. In this article, we will go over many ways to maintain your computer and show you ways to care of it.

Use disk cleanup

You should delete unneeded files such as temporary Windows files to free up some of your hard drive space. To free up hard drive space, you will need to run the Windows Disk Cleanup program. Windows Disk Cleanup comes built in with Windows, and is easy to use. To run it, follow these steps:

• Double click the My Computer icon.
• Right click the hard drive that you wish to delete files from, then select Properties.
• Click on Disk Cleanup.
• Select the check box beside of each file type that you want to delete.
• Click OK, and then click on Yes.

Scan the hard drive for errors

The Scandisk program will examine the hard drive for surface errors, as well as file and folder problems. Scandisk will correct these problems so that Windows and other programs can run efficiently. If your computer is in use several hours a day, you will want to run Scandisk at least once a week. If you encounter any hard drive problems, you should run Scandisk.

To run Scandisk, follow these directions:

• Double click the My Computer icon.
• Right click the hard drive you wish to check for errors then select Properties.
• Click on the Tools tab.
• Click Check Now.
• Select the options you wish to use, then click on Start. If you need further help, press F1. This could take several minutes as Scandisk checks the drive for errors.
• Correct any problems that are found by following the on screen instructions.
• Click on Close.

Defrag the hard drive

Whenever working with files, Windows will sometimes divide the file information into pieces and store them in different places on the hard drive. This process is call fragmentation and it’s very normal. For the computer to use a file, Windows must search for the pieces of the file then put them back together. This process will slow down the performance of the hard drive.

The Disk Defragmenter program will organize the data on the drive so that each file is stored as one unit, rather than multiple pieces that are scattered across different areas of the hard drive. By defragmenting the information that is stored on the drive you can improve your hard drive performance.

When the Disk Defragmenter program is running, do not use your mouse or keyboard because using them might stop and restart the process. If you are connected to a network, you should log off before running the program. Network communication could stop the process and cause it to start all over again.

To run Disk Defragmenter, follow these steps:

• Double click the My Computer icon.
• Right click the hard drive that you want to defrag, and then select Properties.
• Click on the Tools tab.
• Click Defrag Now.
• If the program doesn’t start automatically, click Start or Defrag.