Routine Computer Maintenance

Routine Computer Maintenance

This tutorial is designed to help a user maintain their computer at optimum levels to avoid slowdowns and or disk errors. These steps should most definitely be run after cleaning a virus or malware from your system. These steps should be run really about once a quarter (3 months) or as needed for more intensive computer use.

Run Disk Cleanup

It's time to clean out those old files that are accumulating on your computer. To do so follow these instructions.

1. Goto Start/Computer.
2. On your C drive, right click and click on "Properties".
3. On the General tab, click on Disk Cleanup. This will begin a scan of your computer files.
4. Once the scan is completed (which can take awhile for bigger drives) select those files you want to delete. CAUTION: If you are going to compress old files, be advised that this can take a long time to complete, sometimes hours, depending on the size. Also, if you are in a business environment, I would advise not checking compress old files.
5. Select o.k. and let it run. It may look like it's stuck, but it's not. Just let it fully run and that cleans out a bunch of old files.

Disk Defragmenter

1. Follow the same steps up to step 2 in the previous section.
2. Click on the Tools tab.
3. In the middle of the screen, you will see a button that states "Defragment now". Click that and it will begin to analyze your drive for defragmentation.
4. If the results come back that you do not need to defragment, than you are done and can proceed to the next step.

As a special note, if you want to use a third party program for this, be my guest.

Error Checking (aka Check Disk or CHK DSK)

1. Follow the same steps through number 2 in the defragmentation section.
2. Click on the button in the Error-checking section titled "Check now".
3. On the next window, check both boxes and click "Start".
4. You will receive a message about scheduling this on the next reboot, say yes to that, and you are done.

The next time you restart your computer, you will come to a black screen that will say it's scanning for errors. It is absolutely vital that you DO NOT STOP THIS PROCESS. If you are wanting to run this, please be aware that this could take minutes, or hours depending on the size of drive involved and the level of errors found.


By following these steps, you should be able to have a computer that runs efficiently and reduces the risk of disk errors. For other tips and tricks on speeding up a system, please check out the other tutorials. Thank you!

Part of my regular maintenance includes running spyware checks and backing up.

CarlTR6 said:

swarfega said:

Part of my regular maintenance includes running spyware checks and backing up.

A very good point.

Yep, which is what I refer to the other fantastic tutorials in my tutorial...