I hate slow PCs. Or laptops.
It’s just that, with so many things I have to get done right away, it would be great to have (at the very least) your PCs cooperating with you.
Twice this year, I’ve managed to find myself some form of regular employment- which therefore means two different workstations assigned to me.
Which were so…incredibly…slooowwww.
Instead of completely relying on tech guys, I’ve always thought it was best to be self-sufficient when it comes to at least running your own PC.
In both cases, it was really just a matter of emptying the hard disks of non-essential files (which can be anything from the previous user’s personal junk to music you don’t like and porn you don’t dig).
Ok, here are some essential things you need to clean your PC. Even if you don’t have to reformat your hard disk, using these babies can dramatically improve your PC’s performance:
1. Mozilla Firefox. Don’t use IE if you can help it at all. A lot of malware specifically target IE. Besides, Firefox is so much cooler.
2. Anti-virus. The free edition of AVG is alright; you can download this straight out of their website.
3. An adequate firewall. For this, use ZoneLabs free firewall, which you can also get from their website.
4. Anti-malware. Get Spybot-SD or Lavasoft Ad-Aware. Or both. You’ll need these two to get rid of unwanted little files that tend to slow down your PC.
5. A secure shredder program, like CleanUp40 or CCleaner to clear out your cookies, caches and temporary internet files.
And there you have it. Unless you have some deep-rooted virii in the system, that should just about cover most your bases.
Sure worked for me.
One important thing worth noting is that, especially on the topic of taking care of your PC, an ounce of prevention is definitely worth more than a pound of cure.
Your firewall, anti-virus, and anti-malware programs should take care of a lot of your day-to-day issues. The rest is up to you: don’t use dubious (or pirated!) programs on your PC, don’t open strange-looking emails, don’t let just anyone use your PC.
Renzie Baluyut Online 