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TechTips
TechTip Items
Free Anti-Virus and Spyware Software
Did you know?
Non-commercial users can get FREE anti-virus and anti-spyware programs. They upgrade automatically, with no subscription fees - ever.
I highly recommend these VERY good products:
- Avast AV = www.avast.com
- AVG AV = free.grisoft.com (anti spyware, too!)
- Spybot = www.spybot.com
- AdAware = www.lavasoftusa.com
And remember, these tools are only as good as they are recent. Be sure to set them for automatic updates.
Do You Backup?
Please do. Really, I'm not kidding.
External hard drives are modestly priced, and you don’t need to backup your entire computer, just data.
Complete system failure? You can always restore to original from your PC manufacturer’s discs and reinstall any other programs you use.
And, really, I am not kidding. If you ever have a complete hard drive failure, and you need to get the data off of the drive, it could cost you upwards of $2000 to get a lab to disassemble the drive and "scrape" the data off of the platters of the drive. And there is no guarantee that it will work.
So go out and get an inexpensive external USB hard drive and start a daily backup routine.
Did I say that I'm not kidding?
Do You Defrag?
Do you Defragment Your Drive?
Sometimes a slow machine just needs a little organizing. Simply put, a “defrag” rearranges your data so it’s not so scattered. Which means it can find and load it faster. It may take a couple of hours, but it’s worth it, and you can walk away while it does it’s thing.
In Windows XP:
Click on the Start menu.
Select All Programs >Accessories >System Tools >Disk Defragmenter.
In the top pane, select the drive you wish to defragment and then click the Defragment button below.
HINT: For the biggest performance improvement, do this 2 or 3 times within a couple of days.
Windows Vista does defragmenting automatically.
House Cleaning
Have you ever cleaned your computers innards?
Heat caused by dust buildup is the number one killer of PCs. Dust and animal hair floating around a room get sucked into the air vents and layer the parts like a blanket.
Or the fans clog and run too slowly. This one’s easy.
Just take your PC outside (trust me, you’ll be happy you did), open up the case and blow everything out with a can of compressed air.
Your PC will thank you.
