Preventive Maintenance

Preventive Maintenance

The term preventive maintenance is heard so frequently that the assumption is everyone should understand what it means. Unfortunately, it is all too often believed that the goal of a preventive maintenance program is to guarantee the system will continue to properly function indefinitely. In fact, a preventive maintenance program means delaying and attempting to prevent most future problems involving a variety of systems, whether manufacturing equipment, car or furnace. It also applies to people and their bodies through preventive medicine.

Preventive maintenance refers to carrying out measures to prevent problems from occurring, in contrast to corrective maintenance, which seeks to solve an already-existing problem. In the long run, preventive maintenance saves time and money, protects the data, improves computer performance, and prolongs computer life. These are accomplished by considering and planning for the risks involved in working with computers (e.g. data loss, hardware failure).

How to do computer maintenance and reduce computer problems:

You don’t have to be an IT professional to keep your PC in good shape. Any computer user can follow the guidelines I have mentioned below, and can reduce their PC problems dramatically.

1.      Use a good anti-virus program. This is the most important piece of work in preventive maintenance. Installing the antivirus program is not good enough. You should do following as well:

•  Set-up the program to download and install updates automatically.
•  Schedule periodic full system scans. 
•  Check the virus definitions date regularly and see whether it is up to date. 

2.      Set-up your PC to Download and install “Windows Updates" automatically. Windows updates include Operating System patches for bugs and PC security related issues. These patches can reduce many unknown computer problems. 

3.      Install anti Spyware program to detect Spyware tools. 

4.      Install a Personal Firewall. Most of the anti virus programs are bundled with Personal Firewalls these days. Personal firewall is a barrier between your PC and the outside world. This can protect your PC from hackers and Spyware tools. 

5.      Do not download and install unknown software from Internet. This is the biggest mistake most of the PC users are doing. Some of this software can damage the Windows registry, which cause lot of errors. 

6.      Uninstall unnecessary programs installed in your PC.

7.      Be very careful when you download music from the Internet. Always stick to one trustworthy web site. 

8.      Perform Scandisk periodically to check the Hard Drive. 

9.      Delete temporary Internet files. To automatically delete these files in IE9, goto Tools - Internet Options - Second one click it and select everything. then click apply then ok then it will delete all

1   10. If possible, try not to use Internet Explorer because it has major security breaches which could be potentially harmful for your system. Two alternative web browsers you can try are Mozilla Firefox and Opera or at FileHippo.Java to get the latest Java download.


Functions of CCleaner:
CCleaner is a small program design to optimize your Windows operating system. It’s function is to delete useless temporary files and clean the Windows registry and can also be used as a software uninstaller. The Windows registry function deletes invalid records like those that remains after uninstalling programs.
I consider it one of the best programs of this type because it’s actually small and needs very little memory compared to other programs with the same functions. It is free and also is very well integrated in Windows 7 with multi-language support. A small drawback of this program is that it does not erase all temporary files in the system, namely: do not delete temporary files from other computer users.

 

CCleaner’s has four main menu options:
1. Cleaning: delete all temporary files, but beware if you want to keep your browser cookies and history. You should uncheck that box otherwise you will have to retype login information on all your favorite sites.
2. Registry: this defines the options of deleting registry keys that are invalid, or left behind after uninstall of certain programs, software, patches and so on. When you do system scans you’ll be asked for a backup copy. I personally do this backup because even if it generally delete only records that are not endanger your system it may cause some malfunction of some programs by deleting useful registry.
3. Tools: here you can uninstall any program the you have installed, manage the start-up programs, delete system restores or wipe data from your hard drive.
4. Options: Ofers the general CCleaner options like languages, right-click options, start-up with windows and so on.