Just like you maintain your car you need to maintain your computer. Follow this computer maintenance checklist to keep the computer running efficiently.
Dust – Whether you have a laptop or desktop, you will have dust in the computer and around the fans. From time to time dust out these so the computer can keep cooler. Heat will end up causing hardware problems. This is best done with a spray can of air but only do this when the computer is shut off and not plugged in.
Backup – From time to time remember to backup your files just in case your computer fails.
Defrag – Defragging the hard drive will help it find it's files faster and be a bit more responsive.
Virus Protection – Run and update your virus protection regularly. New problems can come out almost everyday so you need an up to date version.
Spyware Protection – Whether it's spyware, malware, adware, and whatever name we have for these malicious programs, it's good to have a spyware cleaner software on the computer. These programs can take up valuable resources making the computer too slow on top of the other negatives.
Clear Out Internet Cache – It's a good idea every once in awhile to clear out the internet cache on your browser. Sometimes these grow to large sizes. Sometimes sites work better when there is extra room in the cache especially those using flash.
Clean The Registry – This isn't as commonly known as something needed in computer maintenance, but it's still important. The registry on windows machines from time to time can have errors or corruptions. These errors can cause the computer to freeze up, crash, or slow it down significantly. Getting a registry cleaner software will identify the errors and fix them.
