Schewanick Computer Services

Preventative Maintenance For Your Computer
by Bob Brolhorst
Do you have a regular preventative maintenance shchedule for your computer?
If you don't then you should start immediately. In a way your computer is no
different then your car. It needs periodic maintenance just like your car to
make sure it is running efficiently, and to give it some longevity and keep it
out of the shop for repairs. If you are using your computer for your business
as I am, then your computer is getting used daily and should be put on at least
a weekly maintenance program.There are many maintenance duties you can do
yourself without having to buy extra software or having to take it to the
computer shop.
If you have a Windows keyboard it has a button in the lower left-hand corner
of the main keyboard between the Ctrl and Alt keys. You will be able to identify
it by the logo of the flying window. Some people have preferences between
using the keyboard or mouse to get to where they want to go on the computer,
so I am going to show you two ways to preform this first task.
Hold down your windows key and then press F to open. A window will open up and
at the top of the window you will see the name of the window (Find: all files),
or go you can go to the start button on the lower lefthand of your desktop and
left click your mouse button you then you will see a number of items. Go to find
and there you are back at the (Find: all files).
Once your are at the (Find: all files) Type in ~*.tmp and click on Search. All
of these files can be safely eliminated from your hard drive. They are
temporary files saved when you were printing and not deleted from the
cache for some reason or files that remained when you shut your computer
down without going through the correct procedure. The second method to get
to these files is going to the Programs, Accessories, System Tools, Disk Cleanup
feature.
Another type of file that can be safely eliminated, if you're not in the "Oh,
no! I deleted the file and can't find it" mode is the *.chk files. You can identify
these files by their these sample file names: File00010.chk, File0050.chk, etc.
These are recovered files when your system crashed and restarted, causing lost
clusters that the system then converted to files. Any files that you are unsure
as to whether delete them should be stored in a backup file or external disk
If you use the browse the internet frequently you should delete your temporary
internet files and cookies. Go to windows Explorer, make sure you are in the "C"
drive, scroll down to the windows folder. Double click on the windows folder and
scroll down to the cookies folder, single click to open it up. Once the folder is
open, go to edit and when it opens up ckick on "select all". Once everything is
highlighted hit your delete button.
To delete the unecessary temporary internet files do the same as above, only
this time scroll down your windows file to temp internet files and select and
delete them as well.
Once a week I defrag my hard drive. A fragmented hard drive can cause a
great deal of memory errors and can freeze programs.When this happens it
will take the computer some time to put all the fragments back together and
you will be able to tell that your computer is running slower.
When a hard drive becomes fragmented it will look for files, it searches the
entire hard drive for every piece of the file. When this happens some parts of
certain files may be scattered throughout your hard drive, causing it to freeze
up. Windows has a utility called Disk Defragmenter, that can also be accessed
through Programs, Accessories, System Tools.
I suggest that when you defrag your hard drive, make it the last thing you do at
the end of the day. The last time I ran the defrag program it took me 6 hours,
so I did while I was sleeping. If you defrag on a weekly basis it will not take
near as much time.
Bob Brolhorst
Wave 5 Marketing
bbrolhorst@wave5marketing.com
http://www.wave5marketing.com