A common topic of concern among new and old computer owners alike is what they can do to keep their computer running at its best. Thankfully there are a number of simple things every person can do to keep their machines happy and healthy using tools they already have at hand.

Let’s start things off with gathering the tools and resources you’ll need. The two things that you most likely won’t already have on hand are some cans of compressed air, a decent screen cleaning kit, and a copy of CCleaner. The compressed air and screen cleaning kit can be purchased from just about any electronics retailer and don’t vary all that much, the screen cleaning kit can usually be found within the same shop. The best screen cleaners I have picked up so far have been the Monster ScreenClean kits which run from $9.99 to $14.99-ish. They include an alcohol and ammonia free spray along with a reusable microfiber cloth that can be used on any LCD equipped device. CCleaner is the last piece of the kit and can be had for free at http://www.filehippo.com/download_ccleaner/ (click the “Download the Latest Version” link in the upper right.)

Now that everything had been gathered, let’s take a look at the recommended maintenance schedule.

Daily maintenance is very light and consists of letting the system run through any updates it prompts for and organizing any wayward files. Many products these days like to update on a pretty regular basis so you shouldn’t be too surprised to see notices for updates for everything from Windows to your Acrobat Reader and Flash Player. The updates themselves are typically quick to finish if done daily and should run on their own once you give the program the go-ahead to continue. In most cases the Microsoft Updates will be taken care of automatically but may prompt for a reboot if a serious security hole has been plugged or the update needs to swap an important system file out. If you have reason to be suspicious of any automatic update prompts, run a quick search on Google to see if the program bugging you is legitimate or not.

Your weekly maintenance period will be a little busier and should consist of a virus scan, temporary file flush, and a manual run of the Microsoft Updater to make sure nothing important was missed in the past seven days. The virus scan is pretty self-explanatory (if you don’t have any active protection check out our guide on anti-viral software) and can typically be run in the background while you work on your machine as long as you remember to take a look at it once it is complete and verify that it was able to finish and automatically took care of anything it found along the way (most programs will automatically show a summary once complete, some may require you to check the program’s log files.)
The temporary file flush is the next item on the list and is a simple matter of firing up CCleaner , clicking on the “Analyze” button, than clicking the “Run Cleaner” button once the scan completes. A list of the files to be removed as well as a final file size count will be displayed in the status window. If you scroll through the list of files you’ll see that a majority of them originate from Internet browsing, many of these files can be killed off automatically by telling your web browser to purge the files after being closed. I won’t go into that process here, but keep your eyes peeled for our upcoming optimization guide.

The last item to take care of for the week will be a manual update. In Windows XP you’ll need to click on Start > All Programs > Windows Update, or you can open a web browser and navigate to http://update.microsoft.com . Once the update page is displayed hit the “Express Update” button and let the process run. Vista updates are triggered by clicking Start > Control Panel > Windows Updates then clicking the Update button, Windows 7 machines are updated by clicking on Start > Control Panel > System and Security > Windows Updates and clicking on the Update button. If no updates are available it simply means they were handled during your daily updates and you have nothing to worry about. There will almost always be a few optional updates listed for each operating system but I wouldn’t recommend running through them unless you’re told to while troubleshooting an issue.

Still with us? Great, it’s time for monthly maintenance! First up will be a quick flush of your registry which by now has gathered some invalid and unnecessary entries after all the updating we have done and any program installs and uninstalls performed over the last month. This flushing is done through CCleaner and the tool can be found under the “Registry” section along the left. The process is similar to the temporary file cleaning but you’ll want to run Analyze and Clean cycles until the list comes up clean.
Once your registry has been lightened it’s time to shut the computer down, than open the case. Be very careful when doing this, you don’t want to go poking around in there or let your cats explore the innards of your machine but you’ll be ok as long as you pay attention to what you’re about to do. I don’t recommend vacuuming the dust out of a machine as the plastic nozzle of your vacuum will generate immense amounts of motherboard-frying static electricity. The best method I have found is to take the machine outside and blow it off, or if you don’t like unplugging things you could place a vacuum nozzle near the area you’re blowing out (but not too close or touching anything!) so it catches most of the dust critters. Give special attention to the system’s fans and the metal finned structures (heat sinks) which are the main gathering points of the dreaded dust. Put the computer back together, fire it up, then while the machine starts up clean any finger prints or dust off your screen so they don’t leave permanent marks.

Now your machine will be breathing easier and running nice and light so it’s time to run a disk defragmenter and your monthly backup. The disk defragmentation tool can be located under Start > Programs (or All Programs in Vista/Win7) > Accessories > System Tools > Disk Defragmenter and is pretty simple to run. Just make sure your system disk is selected (no need to defrag recovery or factory partitions) and hit the Defragment button to continue. The amount of time a defragmentation can take varies greatly between machines, but if kept up regularly it shouldn’t take longer than 15-20 minutes. Once the defragmentation completes you should run your monthly backup (see our backup guide if you don’t have one running) and you’re done!

Don’t let this list be the end-all of your maintenance routine as every user’s needs vary from computer to computer, but take it as a general guide and find a routine that feels best to you.