XP System Maintenance
Talk notes 4/1/08 by Robin Preston-Whyte
Hardware:
Clean out dust: If using compressed
air canister to blast dust out of corners take care not to use on hot
components. Also if blowing onto fan blades be sure to use a cotton bud to
stop fan from spinning.
Check connections:
Clean screens: as appropriate.
Avoid cleaners with Ammonia. 50/50 rubbing alcohol and water is good.
Note: CD pens must be used as
ordinary marker pens use solvents which can destroy your data.
Reasons for doing maintenance
Lack of maintenance guarantees
Impaired Performance, Clutter: Error messages: Infections: Chaos or
Catastrophic failure.
Questions & Response
You should ask yourself “what
will I do if I find I need to do a complete software re-installation or
suffer a catastrophic disc failure at some point?”
Well
Prepare by identifying &
organising your vital data.
Plan an appropriate backup
strategy.
KEEP A NOTEBOOK. Record how and when you made any
changes.
Things Can Get Worse
When changing things on the
computer it is best to prepare for things going wrong by establishing a
system restore point. These points are also saved automatically every few
days so that if something goes wrong you can return to the earlier working
configuration.
To save a current configuration
click “Start”, “Help & Support”
then “Undo changes to your Computer with System Restore”
Click “Create a restore point”
and “next”. Enter a description and click “Create”.
Use the same procedure to
restore the configuration to an earlier one.
Google, Site Advisor
The internet is a great source
of information and help. Simply “Cut & Paste” mysterious error messages
into Google to learn what others have done about it.
Unfortunately some sites can be
malicious so it is helpful to download the free SiteAdvisor
from McAfee. This will flag google search results
as OK (green) or
Suspect (red) or unsure (grey or
yellow)
www.siteadvisor.com
Outlook Express
Email messages tend to
accumulate and need to be culled occasionally.
With Inbox showing, click on the
From in the from column heading. This will organise all the messages by
sender. Delete all messages no longer required.
Where you have several emails on
one topic, select (highlight) them, then click on the “Messages” Menu item
and then click “Combine& Decode”. This will open all the selected
messages as one message. This can then be cut & pasted into a word
document or saved as a standalone “.eml” message
that can be archived.
To make a new folder for U3A
messages say, Select the “Local
Folders” in the folders tree and then click the “File” menu item and then “New”, then New Folder”.
Name the new folder U3A.
Messages can then be dragged from the “Inbox” to the new folder.
If all U3A messages come from a
particular source you can create a “Rule” to automatically direct these
messages to this folder. Select a U3A message in the Inbox, Click the
“Message” menu item and then “Create Rule from Message” Use the suggestions
to complete the rule.
Email Courtesies
Only use HTML for messages that
require pictures and colour. Plain text is fine for most messages and is
shorter and less likely to carry viruses.
When passing on warnings first
check to see if it is a hoax at a website such as
www.truthorfiction.com/
or
www.snopes.com/
Also if passing on jokes or
warnings to several people, first delete all the previous email recipients
addresses and put all recipient addresses in the blind (BCC) To section. It is not fair to distribute other
persons email addresses to all and sundry, probably including spammers
address harvesters.
Old Programs
Clear out old programs that are
no longer needed. Do this by
Start > Control Panel >
Add or Remove programs.
The “Change or remove programs”
option will be displayed. Select the program for removal and click “Remove”
Click “Add/Remove Windows
components” if you feel able to modify the windows configuration
System Administrative Tools
To make these tools more
accessible do the following
RightClick
Start > Properties > Start Menu tab > Select Start Menu tab >
Customise >
Advanced tab > Scroll down to “System Administrative Tools”
and select the “Display on the all programs menu and the start menu” option.
The Admin tools can now be
accessed by clicking Start and “Administration Tools” under the “Control
Panel” link. These include:
1 Component Services:
Clicking the “Services (local)”
will display the programs that are running in the background. If the
“advanced” tab is selected a description of the service is displayed when an
individual service is selected. Only practice will help you to identify
suspect services.
2 Computer Management;
(i) Under “System Management” Click “Device Manager”. This will
display the computer hardware configuration. If there a hardware problem has
been detected this will be indicated by a Yellow ! RightClick on a
device and select properties for more details and possibly reinstalling the
driver software.
(ii) Under
“Storage” click “Disk Manager” to view the current disc partition
arrangements and sizes. Ideally you should have at least 2 partitions but
depending on your computer use 1 can be fine.
(iii) Also
under “Storage” click “Disk Defragmenter” This will bring up a relevant
panel. Click “Analyse” to see the extent of file fragmentation on the disk.
The colours are explained. Click “Defragment” to defrag the disc. This tidies
up the files on the disc and should be done monthly for modest users. This
exercise can take some time (hours?).
3 Performance;
This option will bring up a live
chart of the computer activity.
Disk Cleanup
After time your disk will be
full of abandoned
temporary files, downloaded web pages, cookies and so on. The disk cleanup
utility will help to get rid of a lot of it.
Go to Start.> AllPrograms>Accessories>SystemTools>DiskCleanup
Choose disk C: to cleanup and you
will see the various categories of file that can be eliminated and the disk space that would be
recovered. Look at all the options. Only delete those you feel comfortable
about letting go initially.
CCleaner
A popular alternative to the
Microsoft tools is CCleaner. This can be downloaded
from CCleaner.com (free
but if you like it they depend on voluntary donations).
Install the program and tick the
option to allow you to open it from a right click on the recycle bin. Once
installed, open the program and do a disk cleanup as before.
Click the “Registry” button and check
for inconsistencies in the registry.
Click the “Tools” button. This
will allow you uninstall programs you no longer require and also stop
programs that are automatically started from the registry.
Click the “Options” button to
edit the program settings and also to exercise control over which cookies you
want to eliminate or keep.
Startup Programs
Click “Start” then “Run”. Type msconfig into the box and click OK.
Click the “Startup”
tab to see a list all the programs and services that are automatically set
running at startup. I was able to identify one that
operated my scanner which I only use occasionally and so disabled it.
It is not easy to interpret this
information but it helps to be aware of what is involved.
Recycle Bin
Finally remember to empty the
recycle bin periodically. It can get very full.
Recovery Strategy
My backup strategy is divide my
hard disc into 2 partitions so that it looks like 2 disks C: and D: All my
data, ie. Documents, pictures, etc are stored here
and periodically copied to an external backup disc.
C: contains all the programs and
some settings but it can always be reconstructed from the original disks.
That is inconvenient so I used Acronis True Image
to take a backup image of
C: when it only had the new and activated XP and Office
software. I then took a 2nd image with printer driver and other favourite
software installed.
Now when I think I think I need
a proper cleanup I reload C: from the image and effectively get a new
computer.
Free Software
MWSnap
Easy to use program for taking screen clips suitable for
using in powerpoint
www.mirekw.com/winfreeware/mwsnap.html
SiteAdvisor
Addin for Internet Explorer, etc
for vetting web sites
www.siteadvisor.com
PCInspector
File recovery
www.pcinspector.de
Free Commander
Old style file manager which opens two folders at a time
making it to drag and drop from one to the other
www.freecommander.com
Infrarecorder
Easy to use CD/DVD
burner
http://infrarecorder.sourceforge.net
CCleaner
See above
www.ccleaner.com
Media Player
Classic
Simple alternative to Windows Media player that caters for
more formats
http://www.download.com/Media-Player-Classic/3000-2139_4-10518777.html
Picasa
Picture editor and organiser.
http://picasa.google.com
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