Basic PC Maintenance Procedures

If you notice your PC running slower and slower and processes begin to become sluggish, it’s probably time to do some routine maintenance tasks. Some suggested tasks are as follows:

1) Clean out your Netscape and Internet Explorer cache directories:
For Netscape, open it and click under “Edit”,
scroll down to “Preferences”, and in the
“Category” box on the left side of the screen,
click on the little box with the plus sign next
to “Advanced” to expand the category, then click
on “Cache”. You’ll notice two cache areas you
can clear- “memory cache” and “disk cache”.
Click on both options to free some memory space up.

For Explorer, start it and click under “Tools”,
then scroll down and choose “Internet Options”.
There are two things you can do here- delete
your temporary internet files and clear the history.
Note: when any of these clearing tasks are
performed, you are wiping out your previous search history.

2) Basic hard-drive maintenance tools: Scandisk + Defrag
Sometimes Windows does not close properly when turning off your PC at night, or else the file system is reporting various errors, and so scandisk will run automatically upon rebooting the PC. You can also run it manually and do a quick check on the state of your hard drive by running Scandisk.

Scandisk
Click on “Start”,
Choose "Programs”,
Click on “Accessories”,
Choose “System Tools”,
Then “Scandisk”. Make sure the C:> drive is
selected.
Choose “Standard” and make sure “Automatically
Fix Errors” is your option showing.
Click on the “Start” button to begin. This
process shouldn’t take long, unless the
utility reports some type of file error.

Defrag
First it is a good idea to disable your screen saver.
To do this, you need to get into your Display settings, which you can do
easily by doing a right-click with the mouse anywhere in a free area on your desktop. In the box that comes up, scroll down and select "Properties”, click on the “Screen Saver” tab, and change the screen saver to “None”.

Second, click on "Start". Choose, in order, Programs/Accessories/System Tools, Select “Disk Defragmenter”. Make sure you have the C:> drive selected under “What drive do you want to defragment?”
Click on “OK” and let it run.

Depending on the state of fragmentation of your hard drive, this process can take quite awhile, sometimes over 10 minutes, so take a break here. You can check the progress visually by clicking on the “Show Details” button and watching the schematic diagram of the process (which will not show until you get to about 3% finished or higher).
How often should you run Defrag? Once a month is a good suggested routine, or at any time you notice sluggish PC behavior.

3) Cleaning out Temp folders:
Another area to check is your temporary folders on the C:> drive. You ay have a “Temp” folder on the root C:> drive (this is something created
manually, not a Windows default), or you may have to go into :\Windows and find a sub-folder “Temp” (this one is a Windows default).

To clean these out and free up some memory space, open the folder and select all the files (under “Edit” and “Select All”) so they are highlighted. Hit the delete key and they are sent to the recycle bin. You can also look in your “Temporary Internet Files” folder and select all files to delete (don’t delete the folder itself).