Like
most people, I bet you're pretty careful about maintaining your car. You
change the oil every 3,000 miles, fill up your gas tank when it's down to
one-quarter full, and bring your car to the dealership every 7,500 miles for
a thorough tuneup.
Yet
if you're like most business owners, you do absolutely nothing to maintain
your PC until the bloody thing crashes. "Most computer crashes are the
result of very silly things that can be prevented," says Arthur
Gerstein, a PC expert who runs SoHo Computer Solutions LLC in Norwalk,
Connecticut.
Here's
a checklist of seven things you should frequently do to maintain your PC. I
strongly recommend you print out this column and tape it on your computer
monitor where you can see it every day. (Note: The following applies only to
PCs using Microsoft Windows operating systems - not Apple/Macintosh users)
1.
Delete your deleted items. If you use Microsoft Outlook or Outlook
Express as your e-mail program, you have two folders called "Sent
Items" and "Deleted Items." The "Deleted Items"
folder contains copies of all e-mail messages you've deleted from your
inbox, while the "Sent Items" folder contains copies of all e-mail
messages you've sent or forwarded. You should go through these files every
week, save the ones you absolutely need, and delete the rest. Gerstein says
he recently worked with a client who had more than 10,000 messages in these
folders and couldn't understand why his PC was operating so slowly.
2.
Toss your cookies. Your PC keeps copies of every Web page you've ever
viewed in a "Temporary Internet Files" folder, while a separate
"Cookies" folder contains programs that help marketers track you
down. You don't need these files, and they can take up an awful lot of
space. Delete them weekly.
3.
Delete your "Temp" files. These are files that end in ".tmp"
that Gerstein says can easily be found by searching your computer for
"*.tmp." Also delete them weekly.
4.
Reboot your computer frequently. Most people start their PCs in the
morning and keep them on all day (and sometimes all night). Gerstein says
this is a bad idea, explaining that "rebooting your PC at the beginning
and in the middle of the day will recover system resources so the computer
will work more efficiently."
5.
Defrag, defrag, defrag. When your PC puts stuff onto the hard drive, it
does it in random sequence. As a result, you often end up with little bits
and pieces of programs scattered throughout your computer's hard drive.
While usually harmless, Gerstein says these bits and pieces "can be a
little bit like space debris; they're small and widely scattered, but if one
gets in the way while you're downloading a new program, there can be
trouble." Your PC has a "defrag" (short for "defragmenting")
program that organizes all these pieces of data. Gerstein says you should
use it at least once a week, "more often if you're running low on free
disk space," but points out that if you have less than 25 percent of
your hard drive free, it may be difficult to defrag the drive. Warning: If
you haven't "defragged" in a while, running this program can take
a few hours.
6.
Run Scandisk. You should run Windows' "ScanDisk" program at least
once a month. "ScanDisk is extremely thorough," says Gerstein,
"because it looks at every single file on your computer's hard drive,
decides if it's necessary, finds a place for it if it is necessary,
and deletes it if it isn't." Gerstein warns that running ScanDisk in
"Thorough" mode can take several hours. "I tell clients who
haven't used ScanDisk in a long time to run it right before they go to bed;
the program will usually be finished by the morning," says Gerstein.
7.
Dust. Finally, Gerstein says you should eliminate as much dust as
possible from your computer. At least twice a year, you should dust and
vacuum your computer keyboard and monitor; remove the trackball from your
mouse and blow out any dust; and open the computer case and lightly vacuum
out the dirt and dust that's accumulated in the innards.
