Would you rather spend a little time today or a lot of money tomorrow?
It’s your choice. You can spend a small amount of time maintaining your computer today, or wait until it fails and you need to take it to a repair facility. Hey, you may have more money than you need – so feel free to do nothing and pay later. The choice is yours.
Those who would like to hang on to their money should stick around. We’ll talk about ways that – with any luck – will keep your computer out of the shop. There are no guarantees. You could do all this and still run into a mess. But by following my maintenance plan, you greatly reduce the chance of future trouble.
Clean out the closet: Your hard disk is very much like a closet. And like that closet of yours, things get hard to find when it is full. So the computer slows down. Take a moment to get rid of programs you no longer use, along with photos, music files and videos you no longer want. When that's done, run a program that comes with Windows called Disk Clean-up. Click open Accessories, then System Tools and you'll find it. It'll run for a while trying to figure out what it can safely delete. Take a look at the list it generates and remove the check marks if you want to keep any of the items it has selected for deletion.
Now do some rearranging: Now that you know how to find System Tools, look there again and run Disk Fragmenter. When your computer stores stuff on your hard disk it usually puts a bit of a file here, a bit there. Fragmenter puts files – when it can – back together. That speeds up your computer and also makes it easier to retrieve files if the disk crashes. Improvements in Windows make this step less critical than it once was, but it's still a good idea to run the program a few times a year.
The dirty truth: The inside of your computer is a dust-filled mess. That's true even if you are the world's cleanest housekeeper. The cooling system of your computer drags in dust and it settles on the circuit boards of your computer. That blanket of dust holds in heat, like the blanket on a bed. Get a can of compressed air from a computer or camera store and blow that dust out of there. Just be careful to touch the metal chassis of your computer first so you don't destroy a component with static electricity. If you don't feel comfortable doing this, take the computer into a shop to have it done for you. One other bit of advice: Don't place your computer on the floor. Dust is heavier than air and settles toward the floor.
Your secretary is frazzled: The Registry is a key part of Windows. It keeps track of everything that is going on – the programs you have installed, the hardware, where stuff is stored and how the computer should operate. So it's like a super secretary. Over time things get out of hand and the secretary gets confused. To straighten things out, use a program that I love – CCleaner. You can find it at www.piriform.com/ccleaner/download. There's a free version and one that costs $25. Getting the free version seems like a no-brainer since it isn't much different than the one that costs money. However, if you pay, you get support from the program's manufacturer. Suit yourself but it isn't crazy to spend the $25.
I know you aren't an idiot, but I'm checking to be sure: A key part of maintenance is the work done by your programs that check for viruses, spyware/adware and other bad guy programs. You'd be an idiot to neglect this step – and I know you're not an idiot. But then I remembered what one of my first editors at a newspaper told me – never assume anything. So I'm just checking. You are using software to check for malware, right? Good, I knew you weren't an idiot.
When all else fails, and it will: The sad part of our story is that you can do everything I've mentioned and still run into problems. That's why it is essential that you back up the data that you create. If you own and use a computer long enough something truly awful will happen. By backing up your data, you are able to preserve all the files you've saved on that hard disk – photos, correspondence, financial data, all of it. I'm a real fan of online back-up sites such as Carbonite and Mozy. But you can also use an external hard disk to create computer backups. Windows comes with a free program for backing up your computer and many external hard disks come with one. If you ignore everything else I've said today, pay attention to this item. Back up your computer or you'll be sorry.
None of these jobs is difficult. But they are easy to neglect since they aren’t triggered by some problem. I urge you to set up a regular schedule for computer maintenance so you won’t forget. Otherwise, start putting a bit of money aside for when your computer dies for from lack of maintenance.
Helpdesk No. 2
Q: I enjoyed your column about ways to avoid having someone guess the security questions used by many banks and email providers. You mentioned providing nonsensical answers so that they wouldn’t be easy for an outsider to guess. Currently I just misspell my answers but this plan should be even more secure. — Name withheld
A: It’s not a bad idea. But I think you are smart to like my method better. No doubt misspelling the answers would help. However, I think it would be hard to remember the exact misspelling used.
Q: I just discovered a shortfall in online backup. You have to be able to access the Internet with the computer that is having a problem. I went to fire up my laptop, which I only use only when traveling, and got a message that said Windows was either corrupted or missing. I have Norton 360 with their online backup for both my desktop and laptop. But it didn’t do much good since I couldn’t use the computer to reach the online back-up. — Dick Barden
A: Yes, that’s a gotcha. On the other hand, you wouldn’t have been able to load a back-up from an external hard disk either if the computer didn’t work. Besides, it’s unlikely that you would have carried the external drive along on a trip. And, if you simply had to have something from the online back-up you could have used another computer to download the files from the online site – something you couldn’t have done away from home if you used an external hard disk for the back-up.
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