How to Clean your Computer - Part 2

Computer Cleaning Part 1 talked about cleaning your computer system to improve performance - here's a few more tips:

• Thin out the startups. One of the things that really slows a system down is programs starting up with your system. Last week I talked about removing programs that you don't need from the system. That can go a long way to cleaning the system up but that doesn't always get rid of startup stuff. Most home users will only be able to clean out some of the startup stuff. It generally takes a good computer technician to get out all the unnecessary stuff, but there's a few things that you can do. First off, look in the Startup folder in your Start menu. Click Start | Programs | Startup. In there you'll probably find quite a few icons. Everything in that list is something that starts with when Windows starts. Look at the program names. You'll probably find something in there that you recognize. If it's not something you don't want starting with the computer, do a right mouse click on it and choose "delete". If you are running Windows95 that may not be possible. Later versions of Windows allow you to do this. If you're running Win95 you'll need to Right mouse click on the start menu and choose "open." That will bring up a box with the whole start menu in it. This will allow you to go to the startup folder and remove anything you don't want from in there. There's quite a few other ways for programs to start up with windows. Programs lurking in the system registry or in one of the initialization files can start up with Windows as well. Most users will require a computer technician to clean this stuff out but it can be one of the things that really speeds up a computer system.
• Disk Maintenance Ever heard of Scandisk or Defrag? Both a very powerful tools that are built into Windows and using both regularly can keep your computer running the top form. Scandisk is a program that checks all the files on your system to make sure that everything is where it's expected to be. A mangled file on your hard drive can sometimes cause the system to slow down or even work improperly. Scandisk will go through and clean all this up. Disk Defragmenter is a wonderful tool for cleaning up the mess that the hard drive gets into over time. As files and programs get written, moved and resized, it tends to leave little chunks of files all over the hard drive. Those files are said to have become "fragmented". Reading fragmented files really slows a system down because for each fragment, the hard drive has skip to a new section of the hard drive. DEfragmenting takes the files and makes them contiguous, reducing the amount of time the hard drive has to work. This can really speed things up. Defragmenting is one of the more important ways to keep your system running smoothly.

Generally speaking, a normal home user can't do much more system maintenance that what is mentioned in these articles. Experienced computer technicians will have quite a few more ways to make sure that everything is in fine working order. Taking time to learn about these techniques is all part of the "changing the oil" type of maintenance that all computer systems need.