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Everything needs maintenance: vehicles, houses, bodies, and your computer.  I bet that the day you bought your computer, it was a lightning fast machine – slicker than reindeer slobber.  After the honeymoon was over and the new computer smell wore off, most likely your boot up times increased, your shut down times increased, and the computer seems bloaty.  In the same sense that we need to change our fluids and tires on our car, we need to occasionally perform proper maintenance on our computer.

There are a few ways to keep a clean computer.  It all starts with keeping a clean desktop.  From there, we have to delve deeper into the roots of the cause of a slow computer.  Let’s look at some of the general reasons for a chunky computer:

• Built up temporary files
• A registry that is too cluttered
• Any virus, spyware, malware, or whatever virus makers are calling them these days
• Fragmented hard drive
• Too many background programs running

In this article, we’ll explore the first three problems listed above and the Propellerhead’s solutions to them.

Clean Built-up Temporary Files

First of all, let’s look at some examples of temporary files:

1. Internet caches
2. Leftover fragments from an uninstalled program
3. Website cookies
4. Your recycle bin

Propellerhead, what is a “cache”?

When you visit a webpage or install a program or save a file, most likely a temporary file was created somewhere along there in that process.  On a webpage, your browser will save the info that took the longest to load (such as the images) in a “cache” file.  That way, if you visit the site again it can load it up quicker.  This is nice, but as internet speed increases, this function is needed less and less.  Every so often, we want to clean out these files.

How do programs leave fragments of themselves behind, even though I uninstalled them properly?

When a program is installed or uninstalled, it usually creates some temporary files necessary to perform the action.  When the program is finished installing or uninstalling, sometimes it won’t delete all of the temporary files there.  Over time, these files will add bulk.

Now why would files such as unkempt caches and leftover temporary files actually slow down your computer?

In an extreme circumstance where your hard drive is very full, they could rob it of its last amounts of free space, not allowing the HD to work properly.  In a more common case, they’ll force your HD to fragment large files or programs.  Fragmenting occurs when there’s not enough space on the drive to write a large file, so the computer has to break the file into smaller pieces located at different physical locations on the HD.  Then, when we want to access that file, it takes slightly longer to access it.

Okay, so how do we clean this all up?

You used to have to perform all these maintenance tasks manually, but I’ve found a wonderful program called CCleaner that does it automatically for you.  I’ve used CCleaner (which stands for crap cleaner) for over 2 years now, and I love it.  Once you install the very small (3MB) program, open it up and click the analyze button. Don’t change any of the settings that are checked on the left, they’re all set properly by default.  It will do its scanning and spit out how many MB it can clean.  Normally, the first time you run CCleaner, you’ll get a lot of HD space back — I deleted half a gigabyte  my first time, and I’ve personally cleaned someone’s computer and recovered 13GB worth of space simply by running CCleaner.

A word of advice for CCleaner: when it installs, it will ask you if you want to install Yahoo Toolbar too.  Please deselect this, because this is junk.  Uncheck everything except “Add Start Menu Shortcuts”.  The window should look like this before you install:

Here’s a video I made that goes over the installation process:

Reclaiming hard drive space isn’t the only way to un-bloat your computer.  We need to be on the lookout for any kind of infection and be proactive about its removal.

Install a Background Anti-Virus Program

If you still have the Norton trial version of anti-virus that shipped with your computer, get rid of that.  If you’re paying for an anti-virus program, that’s fine, but we can get a great program for free.

Two anti-virus programs that I’ve been studying over the past few years are AVG Free and Panda Cloud Antivirus.  Each tackles the solution in slightly different ways, but they both achieve stellar results.  I can say without a shadow of a doubt that AVG Free is a reliable anti-virus program.  I’ve used it for over three years, and I’ve installed it on most of the computers I work on.  However, the Panda program is an interesting new contender in the free anti-virus market. The main differences are that AVG also has a paid version, so they do try and get you to buy the paid program.  Panda does not have a paid version, so there are no announcements that recommend you buy anything.  Also, Panda has an interesting cloud computing method for its virus protection — it is a community looks out for all the most recent threats.  However, Panda also requires you submit your email to them, while AVG does not.  That being said, Panda has never emailed me in the 4 months I’ve had their program.
Both of these programs are great, and much better than whatever came with your computer.  Check them out!

Do you have any other tips for this type of computer maintenance? Any other great free anti-virus solutions that you use? Let us know in the comments.