Backing Up: If the worst happens, your computer crashes irretrievably and becomes a puddle of gloop on the living room floor, will you ever be able to recreate the 3 chapters of your magnum opus that you have already written? Or that worksheet that took all of last Sunday afternoon? Bear in mind that the worst is most likely to happen when you are not ready for it.

You should back up anything that you would mourn the loss of - (ideally to somewhere other than your computer, such as an external hard disc drive, by recording onto CD Rom or DVD, or by uploading to an on-line datastore). The best way of backing up will depend on how much data you need to store.

Cleaning: Apart from the dangers that we have mentioned so far, there is another thing to consider when you are thinking about the health of your PC - refuse disposal!

As it does what it does, your computer stores large numbers of files which it never needs again. These temporary files are often left hanging about and they slow your computer down! Windows includes a utility which will search for temporary files and delete them. There are also a number of easy to use utility programs which will do the same.

Your hard disc drive is like a cupboard - you begin by putting things in tidily but after you have taken things out, moved them around and put them back again, it’s a mess. Every so often you need to tidy up by running a process called defragmentation. How often you need to defragment your hard drive will depend on how often you delete data and how much you delete. Windows has a built in defragmentation tool. (You can find it in Start - All Programs - Accessories - System Tools). Defragmenting can take a long time (several hours). The defragmentation tool in older versions of Windows (eg Windows XP and earlier) is a bit fiddly to use, but there are programs available which simplify the process.

Newer versions of Windows (Windows Vista and Windows 7) have a defragmentation tool which can be set to defragment automatically in the background (ie without you even noticing). It is usually set by default run once a month, so if you have one of these more recent versions of Windows you can pretty much not worry about defragmenting.

SOFTWARE THAT PROTECTS YOUR COMPUTER

Website hosted by ICWebs

© 2012 Legend-ICT