Getting the Gunk Out: Intermediate PC Maintenance
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Getting the Gunk out: Intermediate PC Maintenance 2015 PRESENTED BY: Rita Gavelis Technology Trainer / Consultant www.LibraryAssist.com [email protected] Maintenance Physical Housekeeping Checklist: Full PC Cleaning - Take the system apart and have a canister of canned air available. Remove all dust and clean the external and internal surfaces of the computer to get rid of dust and any other particles. Don't neglect the power supply and CPU fan, which are especially prone to accumulating dust. If you do not have an electronics cleaning product, you can make a simple solution of 1:1 rubbing alcohol and water for external surfaces. Be sure to unplug the electronic components when introducing a solution and allow it to dry fully. As always, when working inside the case, make sure you dissipate static electricity. Keyboard and Mouse - Use a dust vacuum and the alcohol/water solution to clean these dust- and dirt-collecting components. The keyboard can become very unsightly and even send erroneous keystrokes if foreign particles become lodged between keys. Drives - CD-ROM/DVD drives can be cleaned with special kits and/or discs. This is especially useful if you are in a dusty environment. A good blast of air can remove dust collections inside floppy drives. Use covers/panels if your systems provide them to help keep dust out of the drives. Monitors - Use a cleaner on the surface of the display unit to remove fingerprints, dust, and/or other imperfections on the screen. Always spray the cleaner on a cloth to clean a monitor rather then spraying cleaner directly on the screen. If you're cleaning an LCD, use a product designed for that purpose and don't press too hard on the screen. It's also a good idea to take the canned air to the vents on the top of monitor cases to get rid of accumulated dust and dirt. Internal Housekeeping: Basic Degunking: Icons - Minimizing the number of icons on your desktop not only helps you find files more easily, it also frees up memory. Web Favorites / Bookmarks - A staff computer may have a long list of Web Favorites that is cumbersome to navigate. You can use your browser's "Organize Bookmark's" tool to help you organize them. !1 Spyware - these are programs that, once installed, essentially track information on your Web surfing habits or help bombard you with pop-up ads and other advertising. Spyware has also become synonymous with installed programs that don't show up in your installed programs directory. This makes them hard to find, and therefore, hard to uninstall. Though some spyware is harmless, these programs can still eat up memory and slow down your machine. They can also conflict with other programs and keep them from running properly or make your PC crash. Therefore, you might want to get rid of them. By using programs like Ad-aware and Spybot, hunting down and deleting the unwanted spyware can be easy. Cookies - these are tiny pieces of data Websites place in a special directory on your PC. Sites like Baker & Taylor might place a small cookie on your machine that it uses to recognize your computer. Unless you log in to B&T, that data doesn't serve any purpose. it is used only to recognize you when you visit their site. Overall, Cookies are fairly harmless, if you do a lot of surfing, however, these cookies can add up. Temporary Files - Windows creates temporary files all the time. When you open an attachment from an email, your computer stores a copy of the file in a temporary directory in your operating system. If you don't re-save the file in your “My Documents” or other designated document folder, the document will remain in the temporary directory. Windows supplies utilities that locate and delete your temporary files –“Disk Cleanup” is one of them, but it does not clean out everything. You may have to do some house-cleaning to get rid of all of the temporary files you don't need on your hard drive. Knowing where temporary files are located in your computer is a big step in eliminating the gunk. Temporary Internet Files for Internet Explorer (IE) can be deleted by: • Opening “internet Options” in the settings. On the General Tab, select “Delete Browsing History”, click “Delete”. • Select the types of files you wish to delete, then click “Delete”. Temporary files from Windows XP: • Go to the c drive, Windows or WINNT folder. • Look for the temp folder and delete the items found. Temporary files from Vista, & Windows 7: • Click on Start, type the following command in the search box, and then hit Enter. • %temp% • This command will open the Temporary folder. Everything in this folder is safe to delete. • Select the folders you wish to remove then hit “Delete” on your keyboard. You can also click the Organize Button in the Toolbar Menu. !2 • If you are asked to confirm the deletion, click OK. • Note: If you're prompted there are hidden files in this folder, click on OK. If you wish to delete the hidden files click the Delete key or click the Organize button on the toolbar menu, then click Delete. • You may be prompted again to confirm that you wish to Delete Multiple Items. Click on Yes to confirm. • After all of the files have been deleted you can close the folder window and empty your Recycle Bin, permanently removing the files from your PC. Temporary Files from Windows 8.1: •For Windows 8, click on the Magnifying glass, select Settings” from the drop-down menu, and enter: %temp% in the search field. • From the next menu, select “Free up disk space by deleting unnecessary files”. • Select the “c” drive and click “OK”. • The PC will scan the system files for what can be deleted. This may take a few minutes. From the menu that appears, select which files you wish to dump (all files that appear in the list are safe to delete) and click “OK”. This may take a few minutes. For more instructions on removing temporary files from Windows PCs, try the following sites: http://www.c-sharpcorner.com/UploadFile/6cde20/delete-temporary-files-in-windows-8/ http://www.askvg.com/where-does-windows-store-temporary-files-and-how-to-change- temp-folder-location/ !3 Intermediate Maintenance and Degunking Files on the hard drive Files can be stored in many different places in a computer, from the desktop or a folder in the Hard Drive. When creating a document, you might quickly save it but forget where you placed it. You might try to find the file again, but not remember where you filed it, so you copy, create, or download the file a second time. You now have duplicates scattered all over your computer. Knowing what your default settings are for programs like Word or Excel, your browser preferences for storing downloaded programs, and where your email stores attachments, will limit the number of duplicate files in your computer's hard drive. Installing Too Many Programs Many times we find ourselves downloading free or trial software. After taking the program for a test drive, we usually end up keeping the program on the computer, but never using it again. This not only takes up valuable memory, but also could cause harm to your operating system. Many times your computer will come with sample or trial software pre-installed, such as AOL, Earthlink, or other Internet software. Also, when installing a printer or scanner's software, these programs usually have optional software included. When you have a multitude of programs installed in your computer, you have more chance of incompatible programs conflicting with one another. Uninstall the programs that are not necessary or not used. To keep from installing unwanted, optional software, always use the "custom" install option and deselect the extra "gift" software. Segmented Hard Drive Files and Programs are stored on your computers hard drive. When you install and uninstall programs or create and delete files, bits and pieces of those files are left behind. Also, the unused memory in your computer is not in one contiguous stretch, but broken into gaps. When you install a program, it might not fit into one of the gaps, so it is broken apart to fit into available space in the hard drive. As a result, the reader on your hard drive has to physically move back and forth multiple times to read the data in one file. This slows down the hard drive and causes more wear and tear on it. By running your PC's defragmenter, you reorganize the drive so the hard drive reader does not have to work as hard. Defragging can also help your anti-virus software, speeding up scans up to 60%. !4 Advanced Maintenance and Degunking NOTE: Before doing any advanced maintenance: • Backup all important files • Close all applications that may be running • Have the system recovery disk that came with your computer handy The Startup Menu As you add and remove programs, they each tend to add program icons to your Start menu. Eventually, given enough time and lack of upkeep, you'll end up with tons of separate folder entries on the Start, making it unmanageable. You can make Windows load faster and ease its use by cleaning up the Start menu. You can use Microsoft's Autorun, as well as other programs, to assist in limiting the programs that automatically startup when you turn on your computer. Programs Running on Startup When you turn on your computer, multiple programs immediately start to run.