Keep Your PC Healthy!

Posted on May 14 in Tech Stuffby ApplePrint

We stay healthy by exercising regularly. Likewise, we need to help our PC perform certain “exercises” to keep it in healthy condition. Healthy PC means better performance. One of the definitions of better performance is to have a faster hard drive.
» Faster Hard Drive & Disk Defragment
Disk defragment will help you to rearrange the distribution of data across your hard disk – reduce spaces in between data. Meaning, speed up disk access, hence better performance.

• Defrag early & often. The more often you defrag your hard disk, the better performance you are going to receive. It is better to always defrag your hard disk once in a while, but do not wait too long, as it will take longer time to finish defrag. To do so, you can run your windows built-in Disk Defragmenter by clicking Start > All Programs > Accessories > System Tools > Disk Defragmenter and choose your hard disk and start defrag!
• Close all running application before defragment. You should close all running application before performing disk defragment as open applications will not be defragged.
• Delete temporary & Internet cache files. You would like to clear out unnecessary files before you do a disk defragment. You can delete temporary internet cache files, cookies from your Internet browser option/preference. You can also perform a Disk Cleanup. A better way is to use CCleaner to delete Temporary & Internet cache files.
• Remove duplicate files. There might be several duplicate files exist in your hard drive. Use Duplicate File Finder to help detect duplicate files and remove it. But bare in mind that, this tool has no internal decision-making. Meaning, you have to make your own decision for which files to remove, which files not to. It’s always wise to leave alone files that exist in WINDOWS folder.
• Detect big files. Sometimes, big files are created and stored in our hard drive without our knowledge, ie. temporary/log files generated by certain applications. Windirstat is a good tool for looking immense files. It will show file distribution in size in a treemap and also in a graphical analysis form. You can then decide what to remove from there.
• Remove system restore points. System restore point may take some space. You can delete the system restore point by clicking Start > All Programs > Accessories > System Tools > Disk Cleanup and click on the “More Options” tab to clean up System Restore Point. Note: You can only do this when you login Administrator account.

» Backup Critical Drivers
This is proven to be useful if you happen to reinstall your Windows. You can retrieve all the drivers for your PC in minutes after reinstalling Windows, if you have backup all the critical drivers. Using DriverMax allow you to backup all your driver available in your hard drive in one folder. You don’t have to worry about your lost driver now! Use this tool to backup your critical drivers today!

» Free Web Scans
The title explains all. Here are several free online scanning for your PC:

• Microsoft’s Windows Live OneCare
• Ahn Labs’ MySpyZero
• Trend Micro Anti-Spyware for the Web
• Ewido Online Scanner
• Panda’s ActiveScan

The above is my understanding after reading this article. The software links are all linked to PC World.

2 Comments

• Anonymous says:

  May 15, 2007 at 2:47 pm

  Nice tips, gonna try it later.

  Reply
• Apple says:

  May 15, 2007 at 10:13 pm

  I haven’t really try it. But I think its worth trying =)

  Reply

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