Technology: Spring Cleaning For Your PC

Is your computer underperforming? Online activities such as downloading music, installing programs and accidentally opening strange e-mails can crimp the efficiency of even the fastest machines. Here are five steps for keeping your Windows clear. –By Maryanne Murray Buechner

CLEAN AND DISINFECT

Spyware–programs that covertly send information about your Web activities to third parties–is often a big reason a computer is acting sluggish. Fix it with software like Ad-Aware SE Personal Edition (download free at lavasoftusa.com or Spy Sweeper 3.5 webroot.com $29.95 for a one-year subscription). To avoid future digital insurgencies, set your Web browser to block pop-up ads. The Firefox browser mozilla.com makes that easy, and experts say it has fewer security vulnerabilities than Internet Explorer. Make sure your antivirus program is up to date.

MINIMIZE CLUTTER

Move digital photos and audio and video files to an external hard drive like the Iomega, right. Or burn them on CDs or DVDs. Under your browser’s Options menu, limit space for temporary files. That cache saves pages you have viewed for quicker access later; 50 MB is plenty.

MAXIMIZE SPACE

Defragmenting your hard drive is like refolding sweaters to fit more on the shelf, only instead of woolens, it involves data. In the Windows Start menu, go to Programs, Accessories, then System Tools and select Defragment. Do that once or twice a month. Then run Disk Cleanup, also located under System Tools.

ECONOMIZE

Check which icons appear in the systems tray, located in the lower right-hand corner of your screen. Those are some of the programs that launch automatically every time you boot up. Too much running at once drags everything down, so disable what you don’t need by right clicking and resetting the preferences.

GUT AND REBUILD

When all else fails, you could reformat your hard drive and start afresh. Beware: that is not for the faint of heart and could take several hours. You will have to back up everything first, including your favorite programs, and then reinstall it all, including your operating system. Before you take that leap, consult your owner’s manual.

STORAGE TIPS

Got a digital camera? MP3 player? Digital camcorder? Then you probably have many digital goodies to preserve. It’s risky to keep them solely on your computer’s hard drive—catch a bad virus and you could lose the whole lot. You should back them up. One way to do it is to copy all those photos, songs and videos to an external hard drive.

There are many such devices on the market, and they’re quite easy to use. They come in three basic flavors: pocket drives (the iPod qualifies as one), portable drives and desktop drives. The more compact the drive, the more you’ll pay per gigabyte of storage space. For example: Seagate’s nifty pocket model, which resembles a yoyo, provides 5 GB of storage for about $200 or less, depending on where you buy (compare prices at cnet.com; for product details, see seagate.com). Seagate’s larger yet slim 100 GB portable runs about $220 and up. The Maxtor OneTouch II desktop model with 300 GB costs around $300.

Be sure the drive you buy can connect over a USB 2.0 port for faster transfers; if your PC only has regular old USB, data will move at a slower rate. Remember that when you copy individual files or file folders to the external drive, the originals will remain on your local drive unless you go back and delete them. The point of backing up is to have that extra copy, should some disaster strike your machine. On the other hand, moving your media collection off your local drive will free up space, and possibly improve your PC’s overall performance. A hard drive that’s close to maxing out can really slow things down, notes Omid Rahmat, publisher of tomshardware.com, a how-to site for the more tech savvy user.

And as long as you’re cleaning house, consider deleting unwanted files and removing programs you don’t need (go to Control Panel, then Add/Remove Programs). To further conserve resources, limit the number of programs that launch whenever you boot up your computer. One way to do this is to go to the Windows Start menu, select Run and type in the term MSCONFIG. Hit OK, then click on the Startup tab. Uncheck those programs that you know you don’t need to be running at all times. Answersthatwork.com‘s Task List will help you decipher the gibberish.