General Upkeep and Maintanence of a Clean PC

How to maintain a clean PC!

Suggestions on what you can do to secure/clean your PC. Every attempt
has been made to be general and an assumption of a "Windows" operating
system is made here as well - although in some ways, this could be
adapted to any OS.

You should periodically defragment your hard drives as well as check them
for errors.

How to Defragment your hard drives
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=314848

How to scan your disks for errors
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=315265

How to use Disk Cleanup
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=310312

You should also empty your Internet Explorer Temporary Internet
Files and make sure the maximum size for this is small enough not to cause
trouble in the future. Empty your Temporary Internet Files and shrink the
size it stores to a size between 120MB and 480MB..

- Open ONE copy of Internet Explorer.
- Select TOOLS -> Internet Options.
- Under the General tab in the "Temporary Internet Files" section, do the
following:
- Click on "Delete Cookies" (click OK)
- Click on "Settings" and change the "Amount of disk space to use:" to
something between 120MB and 480MB. (Betting it is MUCH larger right
now.)
- Click OK.
- Click on "Delete Files" and select to "Delete all offline contents"
(the checkbox) and click OK. (If you had a LOT, this could take 2-10
minutes or more.)
- Once it is done, click OK, close Internet Explorer, re-open Internet
Explorer.

Add/Remove Programs

Uninstall any software you no longer use or cannot remember installing
(ask if it is a multi-user PC) - but only if you are sure you do not
need it and/or you have the installation media around to reinstall if
you need to. View the Add/Remove Directions.

If things are running a bit slow or you have an older system
(1.5GHz or less and 256MB RAM or less) then you may want to look into
tweaking the performance a bit by turning off some of the memory
using Windows XP "prettifications". The fastest method is:

Control Panel --> System --> Advanced tab --> Performance section,
Settings button. Then choose "adjust for best performance" and you
now have a Windows 2000/98 look which turned off many of the annoying
" prettifications" in one swift action. You can play with the last
three checkboxes to get more of an XP look without many of the
other annoyances. You could also grab and install/mess with one
(or more) of the Microsoft Powertoys - TweakUI in particular:

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/...ppowertoys.mspx

You should also verify that your System Restore feature is enabled and
working properly. Unfortunately, if seems to have issues on occasion,
ones that can easily be avoided by turning off/on the system restore and
make a manual restoration point as one of your periodic maintenance tasks.
This is particularly important right before installing something major
(or even minor if you are unsure what it might do to your system.)
(This, of course, will erase any previous restore point you have.)

Turn off System Restore.
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=310405

Reboot.

Turn on System Restore.
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=310405

Make a Manual Restoration Point.
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/winxppro/maintain/xpsysrst.mspx

Also, you should look into backing up your valuable files and folders.
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=308422

And keep your original installation media (CDs, disks) safe with their
CD keys and such. Make backups of these installation media sets as
well and always use strong passwords. Good passwords are those that
meet these general rules:

Passwords

Passwords should contain at least six characters, and the character
string should contain at least three of these four character types:
- uppercase letters
- lowercase letters
- numerals
- nonalphanumeric characters (e.g., *, %, &, !)

Passwords should not contain your name/logon name.

*Note that anti-virus software can't remove spyware, they can only deal with viruses and trojans