Most people take good care of their cars and homes.  I wish I could say the same about their personal computers.  You would think that a device that often contains a person’s financial and personal information would rate an occasional check-up, but this is not the norm.

No matter what computer platform you are running, whether it is Linux, MacOS, or Windows, all computers need some cleaning up and minor repairs from time to time.  Standard maintenance consists of the following:

1. •Deleting of old, unused files
   

2. •Backing up (archiving) data files and install programs
   

3. •Repairing Directory Structure
   

4. •Defragmenting the Hard Drive
   

5. •Cleaning up the Registry (Windows PCs only)
   

Each of these should be done in the order I have stated.  If you don’t do it in this order, it is very likely you will lose data or worse yet, make your computer where it will not start. You should, at the very least, backup your data.  If you have a large enough device to backup your entire drive, do it.  The stress you save may be your own.

For the Windows PC, do the deletion and backup, then run Checkdisk - make sure you select the options to fix errors and check free space.  Next, run Disk Defragmenter AFTER Checkdisk has repaired all errors on the drive.  If you don’t get rid of the errors first, the defragment process can cause you to lose data. Once you have done this, test the performance of your computer.  If it is still running slow, then you may need to use a registry cleaner to remove unused registry entries on your PC.  One old, but still usable tool is RegClean.  It was originally released by Microsoft as a free tool.  Microsoft has removed it from their site, but you can still find it if you search for it.  The nice thing is that if you need to reverse the changes made, you can double-click on the data that the program removed, and it will put it back.  This is helpful when some program stops working due to the registry clean up.

For the Mac, do the deletion and backup, then run Disk Utility to repair the permissions on the drive.  Because the Mac does defragment most of the files on the drive, you may be able to skip the defragment process.  If you use the computer a lot, then I suggest using either iDisk, Disk Warrior, or TechTool Pro to defragment.  There are free tools out there, but these are a cut above and are very reliable.

Click on the video below to view how to verify the drive and fix the permissions on a Mac with Disk Utility, or to defragment your Windows hard drive with Disk Defragmenter.