Probably the most asked question and also probably the most important when it comes to simply using your computer and getting the most out of what you have invested in.
As a computer consultant it is my job to see that the computer functions to its optimum ability in every way the computer is used. Depending on the business that I visit, or the home/business in many cases, the computer has been configured for all kinds of use. But regardless of what the computer is used for, it must operate effectively as possible in order for you, the end-user to be happy with what you are doing. Believe me, I see enough frustration simply by attempting to keep my own computers up to what I consider "OK" with ongoing maintenance a key. Here is pretty much what I do.
First and foremost you have to have the hardware. A simple fix in many cases is just adding more memory to your system. Prices for this are constantly going down. That is, so long as your mainboard/motherboard is up to date using the latest type of memory. One good example is: If your mainboard requires SDRAM (pc133mhz), this would be considered "yesterdays news". If it uses SDRAM (pc100mhz) then this is even older. Either way, your only choice is with SDRAM which is currently almost twice the price of the more recent memory, the DDR Memory. In fact the latest uses DDR2 memory, but I consider this "bleading edge technology" and not the every day, run-of-the-mill hardware you will see in todays computer (December 2005 that is). With hardware, it all boiled down to "how much $ do you want to spend?" When you are looking to upgrade memory and you find you have the SDRAM, then sure, another 256mb SDRAM may be all you need, considering the next step would be to upgrade the mainboard/motherboard which usually means a new CPU (processor) which would then allow you to purchase the DDR memory. This may sound like "oh yeah, here we go.. Spending a tonne of money", but that doesn't necessarily have to be the case. A pretty typical mainboard/motherboard will now contain a pretty good 3d video card, 7.1 digital sound and 10/100 or gigabit ethernet LAN therefore eliminating the need for these items on your pci card slots. This also means you can usually go to an mATX mainboard which, if you so desired, could allow you to change up your computer case to a miniATX case. Since we are dealing with cases, this brings up the PowerSupply issues. The newer CPU's require more power as well as all these other devices, such as DVD burners and additional USB 2.0 devices including non-powered hubs. When buying a new case, they usually come with a power supply therefore you have a good chance of moving up to at least a 350watt and I suggest 400watt or more, depending on what you feel will suite your needs for a while. Note however, that most miniATX cases will come with 300 or 350watt which is usually pretty good since they also come with some sort of warranty (usually). The basic box should have a DVD burner which now-a-days should be the standard device for backing up data. Note that if you have an older cd burner, no problem as you are capable of at least saving data to a format that is removable. If you are using your computer for viewing those digital camera pictures, then this most certainly is something you will want to have. Consider the fact that if you were go through a disaster such as a house fire and you lost everything. The one thing you would have wished you could have saved would have been your photo albums. So now that you are using a digital camera and as you take those pictures, you are transferring them to your hard drive, and yet you think nothing of the fact that your hard drive could fail at any time, therefore you should be saving them to a backup source immediately after you have transferred them to the drive. Personally, I immediately signed up to a membership with WEBSHOTS as it allows me to immediately upload my pictures to my personal website where I can have the choice of making my photos 'public' or 'private'. Now, I no longer require the need to make my photos smaller when emailing them as I can simply send a link to the picture(s) I want the person to view and they can then visit the website directly, where they can then choose to simply view, or download to their computer for the purposes of printing. Note when you have a high quality camera such as 5 megapixel or more, one picture in its highest resolution will be over 4mb in size--too large to send in an email! For the small subscription fee that I pay on a yearly basis, it is well worth the piece of mind, knowing that all of my pictures are safe! This is something even home insurance will not cover!
First I will take a look at the programs that run on windows start up. You can view many of these by simply looking at the icons in the system tray (next to the clock). Next, you can view the 'quicklaunch' tray and note anything that is NOT a Microsoft product. This quicklaunch tray was initially created for the use of the Internet Explorer, Outlook Express, the Windows Media player and "show desktop" icons, whereas any time you install a new program these days, if you choose TYPICAL install, the odds are you will also get a new icon in the quick launch tray (and it will probably be hidden behind a little arrow since the quick launch tray size is too small to view). You can adjust this by RIGHT CLICKING on the taskbar and UNLOCKING it, then moving the small vertical line on the right hand side further to the right. Personally I will only show the internet browser, the email icon, media player, and the show desktop icon. Anything else will be placed either on the desktop or in the start menu. Note that my desktop will also be quite clean since the only programs I will have on the desktop will be programs that I want to run as I first sit down to use my computer. Any other programs I will run by clicking on the START menu.
Since the START menu has been adjusted to allow for 'small icons' and then 30 (the maximum amount) of recent programs which will automatically move the icon further up the list the more I use it, therefore I do not even require to 'PIN' the icon to the start menu (something you can do by RIGHT CLICKING on it and choosing this option). **ADDED TIP:You will also note many other options when you RIGHT CLICK your way through windows.
From this point, I will go through and make sure the latest spyware software is installed. For this, you should visit the SOFTWARE/SUPPORT page and install all the programs I have listed in the pink shaded section as these are what I will use for all spyware/malware/adware removing and optimizing of the computer.
If certain items are stubborn and will not remove the normal means, then I will utilize REGCLEANER or HIJACKTHIS to manually edit the registry ("NOTE: you can do serious damage to your computer editing the registry incorrectly so at this point, if you are finding a lot of things are not being removed via normal spyware scans I suggest taking your computer to a professional at this point). Although certain software out there now, such as Norton's GOBACK will certainly return your computer to the status it was before you started messing with it, that is, so long as you can start your computer again or know how to restart it using the GOBACK disk (NOTE: again this is territory where I suggest a professional fixes things since you do not want to lose important data).
Now, for backing up the data, I utilize Symantec's Partition Magic first, to create a backup image. Some ask how large the partitions should be. On my own system I will create a 'system partition' whereas the windows operating system is installed, and then create a second partition for other such items like internet downloads, storage of MP3's or things of this nature. NOTE: all installed programs will also go to the system partition, therefore I will make this partition no smaller than 5GB and highly recommend 10GB, that way you are not having to resize it as you start installing your software. This is key especially if you are a gamer and have many games that will be installed on your drive. Since some of these games can take over 1GB of disk space with full install. If I did create this second partition, this is NOT my backup partition. This is something that I will make last, once most of my programs have been installed. I do this because when using Partition Magic, and you select "make backup partition" it does a good job of sizing the drive(s) you already have and suggesting the size of the backup to be made. Typically it is around 40% of the drive size minus the amount being used. This can quickly make your useable drive space appear a lot smaller. Not to worry, since you can always resize if necessary, however I feel that when you get to this point, you should be looking at buying a larger drive. If for no other reason, the drive you currently have can then become the second drive and can be used for nothing but the backup image (NOTE: the two drive option is highly recommended if you are totally serious about having a true backup of your system since the second drive is physically different, if the main drive failed completely, you would still have a backup image of your data.) Also NOTE: the use of a DVD RW drive is highly suggested for backing up your account since this will backup not only 'my documents' but also your email and desktop items as well as your favorites and address book. You may end up using more then one DVD (RW) depending on the amount of data you are creating (to an image). When I say "image" I am referring to Symantec's GHOST which comes as a nice compliment to the Systemworks Pro (Premier edition). If you are serious about your computer and want a few tools that should go with your computer, Symantec's Systemworks (Premier) is what I would recommend.
Now, I realize there will be some techies out there that cringe over Symantec products, this is normal (as is the case with McAfee products in my case--another topic to blog about some day, but for now lets just say I find their products not as user-friendly as the Symantec products), since quite often right out of the box, if you install the 'typical' or 'recommended' installation you will end up with 'too much protection'. Basically it protects and monitors your system, using up system resources that really do not need to be used up. This WAS the way, however so far, the Norton Systemworks 2006 edition seems pretty flawless from a power pig point of view. The typical installation so far appears to work well as it will automatically adjust according to its built in diagnostics and monitoring. The one thing I did is remove or 'move' the norton protection center task to the systemtray as this is something I don't need on the tasktray all the time.
Back to dealing with the image. I will, on a fresh installation of windows, after I have completed all available windows updates that are available at the time, as well as any other software updates, I'll create a 'clean image backup'. This I will usually password protect, just so that I don't accidentally delete it, since this is the image you can ALWAYS fall back on if you reformat the system drive, knowing that you will have all the basics installed and you will not be worrying about potential spyware or viruses from this one. I would then proceed to create a 'drive image' of the system drive which would then be overwritten each time I created a new one. Now, with the latest Ghost software, or by using the Norton GOBACK, you can create restore points similar to the built in windows system restore (only this actually works!). I won't even go there with regards to the Windows System Restore, other then to say I still keep it running, but I do believe Norton utilizes it for the GOBACK therefore I just leave well enough alone. This goes for the windows security center. Yes, I still use it and leave it turned on, however if you are using Systemworks 2006, it will use the norton internet worm protection. Something that was introduced in the 2005 version however it has been somewhat refined and works without errors when the security center windows firewall is adjusted from outside the norton options, this sometimes leads to an error.
I will be incorporating a few system scans that you can do. If you get errors, in the case of the Stop Sign Threat Scanner, without signing up for their service, which is always up to you. Personally however, since I personally optimize computers that I work on, the use of this service would be redundant, this is why as a client of mine you have this remote service built in once I have serviced your computer once. Should you choose to use it is entirely up to you, however considering what you could be paying for repairs, it would seem rather foolish not to have some sort of safety net. This is why more and more security sources and resources will be found at a local server point, whether it be through the net services offered through your ISP or Antivirus Provider, there will always be the need for security and optimizing scanners. Should you choose to utilize my services do not hesitate to contact me directly. With routine scanning of your system using the spyware scanners "Spybot Search and Destroy" as well as "Ad-Aware", this should eliminate well over half and probably more like 75% of the bugs, at least the ones that will cause the most problems due to system resources and overall speed of your computer. In some cases with registry bugs, HIJACKTHIS will be required and/or REGCLEANER. I have also incorporated many other spyware programs only a few of which end up on my SOFTWARE/SUPPORT page however, since the others are usually only used in the case of one specific bug that is being tricky, I will do as anyone would and that is to SEARCH GOOGLE for the spyware bug and use whatever is advertised as a bug remover. Since this antispyware program hasn't proven itself to me at this point in time, I don't usually recommend it as a utility to use all the time. This is pretty much how I feel about CCLEANER, although if you only use the CLEANER part and omit the DIAGNOSIS/REPAIR utility, you shouldn't have any troubles with potential registry issues, although if you do elect to use this, you should always create a registry backup file save, which it does prompt you on. For this, I save it to a 'registry backups' folder in MY DOCUMENTS. As with other such backups like the Address book, the Favorites as well as any other essential files I may deem necessary for regular backups, this will be saved to MY DOCUMENTS, in a folder usually called BACKUP. Simple enough but very important.
This brings me to the FILE MANAGEMENT issues. This is very important, to know where your precious files are. I use the built in Windows System Folder of MY DOCUMENTS for just that.. My documents. This will include My Pictures as well as My Music, however in the case of MY MUSIC, if you want to keep this separate a good place would be to save your music to "all users/my music" that way it is available to all accounts. Sometimes using the built in software just seems right, such as the windows media player. Sure there are others, but for my needs it works great, has many user friendly features and can quite easily be manipulated with your choice of MP3 players. This is something I have found with most Microsoft installed software, it is best to use, however this is not the case with the Internet Explorer. Until they prove that IE 7.x is going to be worthy of going back since I have been a strong advocate of the AVANT BROWSER and have really found no reason to go back to IE, especially at this point when version 6.x has so many security problems. But then this security issues will not go away, at least not with the world #1 browser or internet mail program. If another browser does take over the lead role, it will become the one that gets hacked the most, therefore more security problems will be found then any other browser simply because there are more people using it. This only makes sense, considering the total amount of users using MAC computers for example. This is why you do not hear of as many problems with a MAC. There is no doubt that if the MAC computer, and I'm not saying that one day it couldn't rule the world, but if whatever computer becomes the #1 provider for the world market, it will also show to have the most problems. Open Source programming is wonderful whereas a user can implement changes based on the problems found which is a nice feature, but to implement it vastly on a world market may not be quite the same since the control on what is new and what is very new and untested would definitely create problems.
Constant change is inevitable and that is why you must take advantage of people like myself. When you read TIPS like these and can find a conduit such as what I am providing- a world wide customer service point where a lot of the research and trouble shooting has already been done for you. If nothing else, when you do take your computer to a consultant such as myself, they will be very impressed with your file management and cleanliness of your system from an overall maintenance point of view, and will without a doubt, help the techie fix your problem a lot more efficiently. Unfortunately however, I find more and more computers that I first get my hands on, to be backed up and reformatted in all sorts of fashion and this sometimes from another service center. It is unfortunate that not all can see the software for what it is and use it for all its worth.
I conclude by reminding you of the first issues I mentioned and that is being up to date, within a reasonable amount of time by comparing your hardware with what is available today. Typically if you are spending under $100 to get your system to work within the hardware parameters of the day, then it is well worth it. This could mean the installation of a DVD Burner, the additional Memory stick of RAM, a new hard drive, or even a new mainboard with CPU. Maybe the latter you would pay more then the $100 but if that means virtually getting an entirely new 'engine' to work from, it might be worth it! If you are within my service area, and yes, that could mean anywhere in the world with the use of remote technology, feel free to contact me directly.
