The Lady Programmer

I was offline yesterday. I decided to do put in some downtime and do preventive maintenance work. In the long run it does wonders.

What’s my preventive maintenance duty like?

• Recovering hard disk space
• deleting unneeded personal files (to make my files more manageable)
• deleting old installers, drivers and updates (they take too much space and I download new versions anyway with my fast internet connection)
• uninstalling all programs that I don’t use
• clearing out the temp files folder (which had grown to a gigabite of space) 
• clearing the trash bin
• Checking my firewall settings – making sure that it is set to optimum, just enough to let my torrents, downloads, file transfers work I still use the free Comodo personal firewall at its optimum defense setting.
• Switch to using a free antivirus program. I settled for Avira AntiVir Personal. I have a firewall anyway. It is also important to run a full scan once in a while.
• Defragmenting the hard disk. Very important. Diskeeper 2008 is still my favorite because it allows me to leave autodefragmentation on; it is also possible to defragment the page file too – which results to a faster performance that I experience myself. 
• TuneUp Utilities is an all-in-one nifty utility where I can do most tune ups like unchecking or removing programs that run on startup, optimizing my internet speed, repair, clean and reduce registry size and do check disk operations. What’s great is that I don’t need to hunt for separate programs to do each of those operations. I can even configure it to do automatic tuneups in the background.

Doing preventive maintenance regularly is one way to take care of the PC and detect any potential problems that can be seen.

Are you doing regular PC maintenance? Or do you wait for your PC to be broken? Share your thoughts.

15 Responses so far | Have Your Say!

1. 

   Ade
   November 11th, 2008 at 4:58 pm #

   I use CCleaner on a regular basis, and it’s awesome.

2. 

   Windmill
   November 11th, 2008 at 6:12 pm #

   I have several Utilities that I use to keep my puter in tip top condition. Do it everyday so that it does not accumulate the garbage and then cost me more time at any given go.

   I love speed while the puter works.

3. 

   chubskulit
   November 11th, 2008 at 11:39 pm #

   I need to do this Gem, thanks for reminding me.. The problem is I am worried to open it, I might do something that could deterize it lol…

   Oiiiis kita ko link ni hubby dito, ako din pede???? thanks lol!

4. 

   Calvin
   November 12th, 2008 at 10:43 am #

   i keep my pc in good condition. if i notice any sluggishness i immediately look for the source. although its been a while since i last defragment my drive.

5. 

   Dan
   November 12th, 2008 at 3:42 pm #

   I also do housekeeping every now and then..it helps to manage your computer much easier. Defragment once a month would be a good option to maximize your pc performance.

6. 

   Joops
   November 12th, 2008 at 4:48 pm #

   Yeah, just the other day i cleaned out the air vents of our pc. It was full of dust, no wonder it was so noisy, now its quite.. This is a good reminder Gem!

7. 

   Pastilan
   November 12th, 2008 at 8:30 pm #

   I use Wintools.net to clean my HD, and RegVac to clean the registry. I have a little tool(freeware)that I use to defrag Vista the quick way because the default defrag tool that comes with Vista is forgettable.

   When it comes to cleaning the hardware I could barely have the time. I let it gather dust, I don’t really care. I built my present PC two years ago and the only times I cleaned its inside were the times i made some hardware upgrades within those two years. So far everything’s running smoothly despite the dust that I know has gathered thick inside the casing he he he I am lazy

8. 

   dante
   November 12th, 2008 at 8:38 pm #

   My disk is guarded with Deepfreeze. I had never encountered any problem. If ever my system encountered any serious problem I just restart my pc and it backs to normal state. My personal files are stored in an unfreeze drive. So my PC is low maintenance.

9. 

   pchi
   November 12th, 2008 at 11:32 pm #

   true!

   i also use TuneUp. I like the shredder and register defragmenter function

   galing ah. kahit offline, may nagagawa pa rin

10. 

    Berryblitz
    November 13th, 2008 at 8:56 pm #

    i do format hehehe. i really don’t know who to actually speed up my pc.

11. 

    bloggista
    November 13th, 2008 at 9:05 pm #

    What are those stuffs? Hehe, seriously, I don’t do all these things, including those mentioned in comments. I just back up my files regularly, but haven’t done any maintenance yet.

    Now will try to figure out how to do those things. Hmmm.

12. 

    BioTecK
    November 14th, 2008 at 1:33 pm #

    To be honest… I would like to clean my post but I don’t have time for it.. (Remeber my post!? ) LOL..
    Anyway.. maybe I’m going to do it next time when I have some days off work!

13. 

    twinks
    November 15th, 2008 at 2:36 am #

    Before I don’t do regular pc maintenance, but when my pc was hit by a virus it scared the hell out of me. Since then on I do pc maintenance twice a month. Lalo na now that I’m blogging andami kong rubbish files.

14. 

    Hicham
    November 15th, 2008 at 10:06 am #

    Thanks a lot for the informative post and hey the sweet cat gave you a hand or what?

15. 

    kouji
    November 16th, 2008 at 2:21 pm #

    hmmmm… haven’t done this in a while. :O maybe next year?