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Periodic (Daily-Weekly-Monthly) Maintenance
- March 2009:
Continuously.
Keep an up-to-date antivirus program installed and running. Keep
a firewall up and running. Keep your operating system updated.
Business users, your PCs will likely have a good corporate
antivirus utility installed, but many outfits depend on their
employees to update their individual programs. Hone users often
have utilities installed on their machines when they take them
out of the box, but the drawback to these is that they're
usually time-limited and won't update for free after their terms
expire.
Either purchases the software and updates it regularly, or
download a free antivirus program such as AVG or Antivirus and
keep it updated. XP users have a no-frills firewall utility on
their machines, but a freebie such as Zone Alarm or Agnitum is
better; other Windows users need to install a firewall utility
if they don't already have one. (Most corporations and
businesses have some kind of firewalls up...most, but not all.)
Updating your operating system is usually as simple as choosing
Windows Update from your Start menu. Find out more about share-
and freeware security software at my Antivirus, Security
Programs, and Password Managers page.
Daily.
Scan your disk quickly. Use ScanDisk or Norton's Disk Doctor to
check for problems, cross-linked files, etc. If you like, you
can put a program shortcut in your Startup folder so you
automatically scan every time you start up Windows. At the end
of every day, back up the files you've modified. Elsewhere on
this site are instructions how to organize your data into neat
folders and subfolders for easy backup.
Weekly/Biweekly.
(Only the most powered-up power users need to do these on a
weekly basis; the rest of us can get along doing it once every 2
weeks or so.) Back up your whole hard drive. See elsewhere on
this site for backup info. Defrag your drive -- info on using
Windows' Disk Defragmenter utility is available on this same
page, or you might use Norton's Speed Disk or another defrags
utility. Scan your drive thoroughly, using the scanner's slowest
and most thorough settings.
Monthly.
Good god, what else should I do? You should delete all files
older than one week from your C:\WINDOWS\TEMP folder. You should
also test your backup files by trying to restore a few files
from various folders, preferably files that are expendable. If
you can't restore them, your tape drive (or Zip drive, or CD
drive) is faulty. After you've done this, update your virus
definitions through your virus scanner's Web site, or use your
virus scanner's built-in Update tool. Win 98/ME users, you can
use the Disk Cleanup option (found under System Tools and also
under My Computer -- right-click the drive you want, select
Properties, and there it is) to get rid of various temp files,
empty the Recycle Bin, and so on.
Once.
Make emergency boot floppies (see here), and make sure your CD
drivers are on there. If your virus scanner lets you make
emergency boot floppies, do so as well. Write-protect all your
boot floppies and store them somewhere safe from rain, sleet,
family pets, and destructive children. Buy a surge suppressor,
and not the $12 El Cheapo model from Junk Mart. Look for one
with a UL 1449 rating of 330 volts and 240 joules at the
minimum, and make sure it has enough outlets for your use. You
might want to snag a surge suppressor with phone jacks to go
between your wall outlet and your modem. Get a tape drive or
some kind of high-capacity storage medium such as a Zip drive or
CD-RW, and use it to back up your hard drive. Buy a good set of
utilities such as Norton Utilities, On Track SystemSuite, or
McAfee's Nuts Bolts, and a good virus scanner if it isn't
included in your utilities package. Organize your data files
(detailed elsewhere in this site) for easy access and backup.
Win 98/ME users can go through the Maintenance Wizard, found in
System Tools, to schedule regular "tune-ups" of your system. Go
through the Custom settings to see exactly what is available and
what you want to mess with. There are a lot of options! The
Express option sets things the way most non-power users need; if
you find the Custom menu intimidating, go with Express instead.
ScanReg is a utility bundled with Win 98/ME that keeps copies of
your Registry in case of error or system failure. It makes a new
copy of the Registry every time you reboot the computer, keeping
the last 5 copies in the C:\WINDOWS\SYSBCKUP\ directory. (Can't
find the folder? its "hidden," so you'll need to enable the
viewing of hidden files and directories in Windows Explorer
through Tools, Folder Options, Advanced.) The file names are
RB001.CAB, RB002.CAB, and so forth through the fifth file. If
you don't shut down your computer very often, ScanReg doesn't
get a chance to make recent copies of the Registry. You may want
to consider adding the SCANREG/BACKUP command to your Scheduled
Tasks. How to restore the Registry using ScanReg's files?
Simple, just open a DOS prompt and type C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND --
when you get into this directory, type SCANREG\RESTORE and
choose from the files available to you. Reboot to restart
Windows with the restored Registry. If you want more control
over what is restored, then use Windows' simple command-line
utility called Extract to restore the files inside a CAB. The
file is in the C:\Windows\Command directory, so you may need to
type its full name of C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND\EXTRACT before the PC
will find it. Extract with no arguments provides a quick help
screen that describes how to use it. If you just give it the
name of a CAB file, Extract will show you the contents of the
CAB.
Other
Maintenance Categories:
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