General "good housekeeping"

Emuchops

Can anyone please tell me what I should be doing regularly to ensure that my computer works efficiently. I know about cleaning up disks and defragmenting-is there anything else? Should I be deleting cookies and if so, how?
I only use computer for surfing and e mails-no games etc, but it seems to have gone quite slow of late. Ive had it about 10 months.
Thanks a lot.

C_Ronaldo

How about running anti virus and adware

Antexter

What i used to do was pritty much nothing thats why its so messed up , seems like a lot of work to keep up a computer, so i switched to linux .

but what you need to do isa a degrag every month virus scan every week, delete you're private data (cookies, emails etc).
remove crap you don't use from add and remove when ever possible.
and check you're startup information occasionally using winpatrol

iviv

As said, regular virus and malware scans and defrags should boost your performance a treat. Cookies and the like shouldn't impact your performance.
There are a couple of commercial Defrag programs out there that work in the background, so when your computer is idle it defrags your hard drive. These are good becuase you don't need to spend hours doing a full defrag, and they don't hold you up in any way. Diskeeper is the best of these.
The Pandaware active scan works a treat too, though it works best in Internet explorer.

You could also download Firefox and get the Adblock Plus extention. This filters out all advertisments on websites, which can improve loading times a little bit, since you don't load the adverts.

Bollotom

You can d/l System Mechanic, but make sure you get version 6 as this is a freebie. Works like a dream

http://www.iolo.com/ads/vnu/sm6promo.aspx

JethroTull_2

iviv wrote: »

There are a couple of commercial Defrag programs out there that work in the background, so when your computer is idle it defrags your hard drive. These are good becuase you don't need to spend hours doing a full defrag, and they don't hold you up in any way. Diskeeper is the best of these.

I am a Diskeeper user too (Pro, 2007), and it is indeed a very convenient solution to the defrag problem. No more manual defrags necessary - Diskeeper does everything automatically.:D

For general maintenance, do the following, in this order, to speed up things:
-Windows/programs updates
-Uninstall unnecessary/junk programs
-Harddrive cleanup (delete temp files, browser cache etc. Use Ccleaner)
-Defrag!harddrives
-Spyware/malware/adware scans - use Spybot etc
-Anti-virus scans

Also, use better,secure browsers like Firefox or Opera rather than IE for online safety.

sheedatali

what he said , exactly my thoughts. General rule of thumb is, install a program only if you want it, and the ones you dont need, get rid of em, windows registry stays memory resident, and having unwanted programs means that all the registry entries from those programs are loaded each time even when you dont use them. CCleaner cleans up broken registry links, A good antivirus will keep you computer safe, and a good firewall will keep unwanted visitors outside.

Emuchops

thankyou everone for your advice.