PC how-to

Keep your PC running smoothly

Computers – we all use them every day but do you know what goes on ‘under the hood’? I’m not exactly the most technically minded person, as my regular readers will know, but there are certain things you do need to understand.

Here are the basics for keeping your PC running smoothly.

Anti-virus Protection

This is ESSENTIAL! The second you connect to the Internet your computer is vulnerable to attack from people with nothing better to do than trash your computer, steal your bank and credit card details and spam everyone in your email address book.

Your PC may already have come with something like Norton installed – make sure it is turned on and updating regularly (at least once a day).

My preferred security system is AVG – you can download a free trial version but I urge you to get the paid version ASAP. Kaspersky is another security system with a strong track record.

Your Internet browser

If you have a PC then you are probably using Internet Explorer to access the Internet. As this is the default browser for most PC users it is the one that is also susceptible to the most Internet nasties.

Firefox Internet browser

Protect yourself by using the more secure FIREFOX. It is free to download and use. Installing Firefox will not take your IE browser away – click on whichever you prefer to get online. Click the button below to install Firefox.

No Script

Once you have FIREFOX installed, download the addon No-Script. This nifty little piece of software blocks many of life’s annoyances, like videos that crash your computer or endless ‘Are you sure’ boxes when you try and leave a site.

Once you have NoScript installed you will need to spend a little time telling it what’s OK.

When you open a site you will see a little beige bar running along the bottom of the screen. Click on the Options button, just above the NoScript logo at the bottom right and you can choose which sites to allow. You will need to allow the site you are viewing (the bit that allows you to get paid is a script).

Sometimes you will need to allow more than one script per site – if things aren’t working the way they should then select ‘temporarily allow all this page’. If NoScript is causing the problem then this will solve it.

Once you know which scripts are essential you can choose to allow them permanently or you may prefer to temporarily allow the script each time you log into the site.

Highly Recommended: Download these free guides to Firefox addons:

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Flock

As with all tools, you do need to understand how to use it effectively. The very things that make NoScript a great add-on also makes it a royal pain in the behind so a simple and practical solution that I use is to have Firefox installed with NoScript for surfing and Flock (great for social networking) for general surfing, blogging and dealing with emails.

Spyware remover

Spyware is little bits and bobs of code left on your computer that records which sites we visit and what we do online so that advertisers can better target us for their products.

Although generally harmless, they do slow your computer down. You can quickly and easily get rid of them with a program like Ad-aware – free to download. Run it once a week or so to keep things clean.

Keep your computer running smoothly

CCleaner

If you think you can guess what the ‘c’ stands for, you are right!

Download this nifty bit of free software and set it to run at start up – this will take care of much of your PC house-keeping for you automatically.

Disk cleaner

This tool is built into Windows. Your PC tries to be helpful by remembering all sorts of stuff. The result is it gets bogged down so get into the good habit of running disk cleaner every day before you shut down your computer.

If you’ve never used disk cleaner this is how

1. Click on your start button, then on Control Panel
2. Click on Performance and Maintenance
3. Click on the third option down Free up space on your hard disk
4. A pop-up box with a progress bar will appear.You can carry on with other things while it is working although your computer might be a little slower than usual. Great time to put the kettle on!
5. Once it has finished deciding what it needs to do a different box will appear, listing what could do with a clean. Click OK and yes when it asks you if you are sure.
6. Once its has finished it will close the disk cleanup tool down – you don’t need to do anything else.
7. If you click your Start button again you will see Disk Cleaner listed – right click on it and select ‘pin to start menu‘. This makes it a bit quicker to find next time

Disk defrag

This is another Windows tool you need to be familiar with.

You know the sort of tidy-up you do when you see the mother-in-law walking down the path? This is exactly what your computer does when you install something – it stuffs little bits wherever it finds a bit of space. Obviously, it then has to hunt for all the pieces to run the programs and this is where the disk defrag tool comes in.

Defragmenting programs means they are all put away neatly on your hard drive so the programs run faster.

Steps 1 and 2 as above but this time click on Rearrange items on your hard disk to make programs run faster.

Click on the little box picture that says HDD next to it (under volume) then click on the Analyze button near the bottom. You will see coloured lines start to appear in the bit under ‘estimated disk usage before defragmentation‘. Green is ‘good’, red is ‘bad’.

Once it has run the analysis a pop-up box will appear. It may say ‘you do not need to defragment this volume’ but if you see any red lines then go ahead and click Defragment anyway.

Once it has finished it will ask you if you’d like to view the report – this would mean absolutely nothing to me so I’d have to admit I never bother!

Running the defrag tool once a week should be often enough.