Posts Tagged ‘Spyware’
Simple Tips For Keeping Your P.C. Running Smoothly
If you are like me, addicted to cleaning up and keeping your computer running smoothly then you will most likely know these things but I was thinking about how many people contact me when they have computer problems.
In most cases when I go to take a look at the computer in question it just boils down to simple P.C. maintenance.
When you are used to doing it yourself you seem to take for granted that everyone does it but it’s surprising how many people have absolutely no idea of how to keep their P.C. maintained.
Mention Defragmentation to some people and they look at you as if your an alien.
If the word Defragmentation sounds like a Terminal Sickness to you then you need to keep reading this article lol.
Of course this doesn’t at all mean that if you don’t know what to do then you are dumb it just means that nobody has ever taught you or you’ve never read about it.
Anyway the tips in this article are aimed at anyone using a Windows System and who has very little or no idea of how to maintain a P.C. they are simple enough for anyone to carry out.
Ok first one thing that is very often overlooked is Temporary Internet Files.
When you browse the Internet in order to view a webpage it has to be downloaded to your computer or at least the important parts of it and even after you have closed the pages you were viewing they still leave the temporary files behind on your hard drive.
These mount up and use up your valuable drive space and also slow your computer down in time, in fact if you are an active surfer it should be no problem to accumulate 100 MB or more in temp files in a couple of hours.
To clean these up do the following:
If you are using vista or xp simply go to your start menu, click on Control Panel then the Internet Options Icon.
A dialog box will appear with tabs at the top.
If it doesn’t default to the General tab then click on that and you should get this view. Click_Here
Just go down to Browsing history and Click on the Delete button as shown by the arrow.
Another thing that tends to get clogged up in time is your registry but this is a part of your computer to stay out of if you don’t know what you are doing .
The good news is there are a few programs designed to do this for you and you can download a good one for free to do both the above tasks and more by clicking here.
Download and install the above program and run it at least once a day, it doesn’t take long.
Spyware or Adware is one of the worst things for slowing down your P.C.
As you surf the Internet quite often little programs will be installed on your P.C. without you knowing, they are known as spyware programs and can vary in type or functionality depending on whatever they are designed to do.
The worst sort are Trojan Horses as these can be dangerous to your computer and/or privacy, they are often a hackers connection from your computer to his/her computer and can be used to gain external control over your P.C. if not found and deleted in time.
The other sort of Spyware programs are usually used to track browsing activity etc for research on advertising amongst other things but even if they are not accessing your personal information they are still using up your Internet bandwidth and P.C. resources causing it to slow down.
So what’s the solution to this one?
For the spyware you can download a little program that I have used for years and is also free by clicking here
Download the above program and run it at least once a week to keep your P.C. clean.
As for the big boys such as the Trojan Horses and Viruses etc you need to install some sort of Anti Virus Software and a Firewall to help prevent hacker attacks.
Here are some free and/or popular downloads you may want to try:
OK. now that your P.C. is clean you need to Defragment your hard drive.
It’s hard to explain Defragmentation without getting technical but the simplest way I have found to explain it is as follows:
If you are like me at the age where you can still remember the cassette tapes that you used to record music etc on then you will also remember that if you erased for example song number 4 and placed the cassette in the recorder starting at the beginning then to listen to song number 8 you would have to wind the tape forwards to that point where the song was.
You would also have to wait until the tape wound through the empty space too where you erased the song 4.
You could cut out a piece of the tape that was empty and splice the two together then you would be able to wind the tape through faster because every song was after the last one with no more empty space.
O.K. if you are too young to remember cassette tapes not to worry because a hard drive works on the same sort of principal.
Everything you do on your computer or the Internet leaves behind rubbish such as Temp files etc and using the tips I described above will sort all that out for you but just like erasing the song on the cassette tape every time you delete something it leaves a space on your hard drive.
The fact that your P.C. has to scan over the empty spaces too doesn’t help your speed but another thing also happens.
The next time you save a file to your hard drive your computer will automatically search for the first available empty space and write it to that section of your drive but unfortunately if the file won’t all fit in that space it will search for the next available space and throw the rest of the file in there.
This causes your file to be split into fragments hence the name File Fragmentation and the next time you want to open the file it takes longer for your P.C. to find the whole file.
As you can imagine once you’ve saved and deleted a few hundred or thousand files your hard drive is going to be in quite a mess and heavily fragmented causing it to run often really slow.
To solve this problem you need to Defragment your hard drive on a regular basis as follows.
If you have used your computer for a while and never done this (You’d be surprised at how many people fit into this category) then start it at night and let it run while your in bed asleep or whatever else you may be doing because it could take hours.
If you are using Vista or XP simply go to your start menu, click on All programs then Accessories, System Tools or System Workset then finally on Disk Defragmentation.
You can first Analise the disk and Windows will let you know if it’s necessary or not but I recommend doing it anyway and I personally defragment without analyzing it first to save time but that’s your choice.
I would recommend doing this at least once a month and preferably more, I sometimes defrag on a daily basis to keep my P.C. running smoothly but that’s me 
Anyway I hope you enjoyed this article and please feel free to add any comments or extra useful information in the comments box below.
P.S. Here is a course that I highly recommend for anyone wanting to learn step for step how to really tune up their P.C.
Have a nice day
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