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Memory Upgrades from crucial


Keeping Your PC Healthy - Top Tips

Here, you'll find a small collection of tips on how to keep your PC healthy - advice from the team at FileSaveAs


 

PC health advice

Here's a small collection of tips on keeping your PC running well...

Stay up-to-date Go to www.windowsupdate.com and run a Windows Update to make sure you have the critical patches released by Microsoft
Be Virus-free Get yourself a good anti-virus app - we recommend McAfee AntiVirus software (Also from Amazon) .

If you think you have a virus, use the free online virus checker to scan your machine - See http://www.symantec.com/securitycheck
Tidy-up
  • Windows can fill your hard-disk with temporary files - this can slow your machine down. Make sure you delete your Temporary Internet files now and then - From Internet Explorer, select Tools > Internet options > Delete files (select Delete offline content).
  • Windows provides a useful cleanup tool to do this and to clean up other temp files. Go to 'My Computer' and right-click on the hard drive (C:) icon. Select 'Properties' and 'Disk cleanup'.
  • Uninstall any apps that you don't use any more from Start > Settings > Control Panel > Add/Remove Programs
Speedup

To speed up your PC, try the following:

  1. Delete as much rubbish as you can (see above)
  2. Run a 'defrag' on your hard-disk to speed it up - Go to 'My Computer' and right-click on the hard drive (C:) icon. Select 'Properties', 'Tools', then 'Defragment now'.
  3. If your system tray on your toolbar looks anything like ours, you've probably got too many programs running in the background taking up valuable memory. Install and run the free Startup Inspector application to see what automatically starts when your machine does. You can then get the advisor to tell you what they are and whether you need them. You can also stop them from starting up.

    Sys Tray

    You could also look at upgrading the RAM in your machine to give you a speed boost. We recommend: Crucial, who offer an online upgrade advisor to ensure you don't buy the wrong thing.

     

Spyware Some applications that you may have downloaded from the Internet may contain what's called Spyware -in some ways similar to a virus, these can do nasty things such as pass details on your computer activities on to others, or mess around with some of your settings. It's advisable to run an anti-Spyware application at least once a month. We recommend the free app: Ad-aware
Reduce Spam

One of today's real pains is the amount of spam email that gets through. One thing you can do to reduce this is to sign up to a free spam prevention service - we currently recommend CloudMark, as this is the most effective solution we've found for keeping spam to a minimum - download the free trial, which adds a toolbar to Outlook.

Cloudmark toolbar

Pop-ups

If you're being annoyed by having adverts popping up while you're browsing websites, consider getting yourself a pop-up blocker.

We recommend the Google Toolbar, which adds extra functionality to your web browser, including a pop-up stopper. Best of all, it's free. Download from toolbar.google.com.

Advanced stuff If you're more of an advanced user, the following are worth a look too:
  • Tidy your registry. Norton Systemworks comes with various tools to tidy and optimise your drive, as well as a tool to scan the system registry. Additionally, the following tools are useful registry cleaners: RegCleaner & RegScrub XP
  • System Mechanic 6 - A great all-round application for keeping your PC running - tidy your drive, compress & optimise the registry, repair disks and reduce clutter. More on our System Mechanic 6 mini-review

 

Handy Links

 


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