Preventive Care Tips for Keeping Your PC Healthy
An apple a day may keep the doctor away, but keeping your PC healthy can be a little more complicated. These days most of us try to be proactive about our health: We take vitamins, brush our teeth, try to exercise regularly and get enough sleep. We know it’s better to prevent health issues than to miss work and rack up expensive medical bills because of an infection or some other problem.
The same is true for your PC – practicing preventive maintenance is much easier than dealing with the time, cost and pain of crises that can occur later on. Human viruses are bad, and so are their digital counterparts. But there are ways to keep your PC healthy – a virus scanner, for example, is one way to prevent problems.
Here are four ways to keep your PC fast, powerful and healthy for years to come.
- Update software: When those pesky update reminders appear, it’s easy to click away and say you’ll download the update later, explained Kim Komando of USA Today. But when a company releases a software update, it’s typically for an important reason. Updates improve the security, functionality and usability of applications. It’s better to take the time to install patches right away than to leave your system vulnerable to other problems.
- Free up hard disk space: There’s a reason we talk about “decluttering” as an important health benefit: It makes it easier for us to focus on what’s important and allows us to be more functional. The same is true for your PC. By removing unnecessary files and programs, you can free up your hard drive for more important and immediate computing needs. A PC tune-up product such as iolo technologies’ System Mechanic can provide specialized tools for quickly and easily reducing clutter and reclaiming hard drive space.
- Clean your hardware: Since you bought your PC, you’ve probably taken a bath or shower every single day. Your computer, on the other hand, has been amassing dust, dirt and crumbs. All of this debris can trap heat, clog up your computer’s fan and shorten the lifespan of your equipment. Depending on the kind of system you have, you can open up your computer and use canned compressed air and a microfiber cloth to remove accumulated residue. But it’s a good idea to periodically get a computer clean up completed by a professional who can get to all those small, hard-to-reach places and make sure the dust isn’t preventing anything from operating as it’s supposed to. Take the time to clean off your keyboard, mouse and other hardware too. This will keep your hardware healthy and also get rid of germs that could make you sick.
- Use system restore: Microsoft recommends this process as a great way to protect your PC from anything you might inadvertently download or introduce onto your system. It’s even helpful if there’s been a power outage and you weren’t able to save information before your computer shutdown. System restore keeps a record of files, settings and other preferences so that your computer can be returned to an earlier state if a problem occurs. You can schedule system backups daily, weekly or at other times.
Keeping your PC healthy and preventing problems is important. System Mechanic helps ensure system health and speed over the long term with a series of automated maintenance actions no other optimization solution offers.
System Mechanic:
• Goes to work whenever a PC is idle
• Ferrets out clutter and redundant programs
• Deletes obsolete files and realigns important ones
• Keeps hardware drivers updated
• Revitalizes your registry
What’s more, System Mechanic covers all the PCs in your home with just one product license.
