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Langa Letter: A Complete PC Maintenance Checklist
Fred Langa offers a comprehensive plan for keeping your PC in absolute top-notch condition.
By Fred Langa, InformationWeek
Nov. 21, 2005
URL: http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=174300458
Thwack! That was the sound of me slapping myself in the forehead.
It happened the other day, while I was working through the normal monthly maintenance on my primary PC. Everything was going smoothly; routine maintenance tends to prevent many problems from developing in the first place; and can catch any others when they're small and easy to correct.
I'll admit I'm a bit of a fanatic about maintenance because I depend on my PC to make a living; I probably go further than most people would need or want to. But odds are you use a PC at work or in a home office or recreationally, and the smooth, trouble-free operation of your PC is either essential to getting your work done, or is an important part of your after-hours life. Some level of routine PC preventative maintenance would be good for your PC, too. That's why we've covered many of the separate steps and techniques of PC maintenance in this space and in my newsletter.
But the "thwack" moment came when I realized I'd never stitched all the pieces together into a comprehensive whole for you -- I'd never itemized the steps in checklist form to make it easy for you to select exactly which maintenance steps you want to follow, and when. Let me correct that oversight today.
In this article, I'll tell you all the maintenance steps I take on a daily, weekly, monthly, semiannual, and annual basis.
You may not need all the steps I take, and that's perfectly fine. You can "cherry-pick" the ideas, techniques, and tools that best fit your own preferences, to create your own PC maintenance checklist. Or, if you rely heavily on your PC, you may wish to adapt my full task list to your own unique situation -- or even expand upon it!.
In any case, with the right level of routine maintenance, maybe you'll be able to avoid a "thwack" moment of your own!
The Foundation Steps
Because this article is about maintaining a PC rather than repairing one, we'll assume that your PC is in reasonable shape to begin with, and not suffering from major malfunctions, hangs, slow operations, and so on.
On the other hand, if your PC is in need of repair or basic setup, you can solve those problems by searching the how-to information available at InformationWeek.com, including: "System Setup Secrets For Windows XP," "10 Ways To Make Windows XP Run Better," and "10 More Ways To Make Windows XP Run Better ."My newsletter site also contains related materials.
Once your PC is basically OK, you can then keep it that way with the routine maintenance we'll discuss in a moment.
In the same vein, because this article is about keeping your PC running right rather than fixing major, pre-existing problems, we'll further assume your PC isn't infected with viruses, worms, or other malware; and is well-protected by defensive software.
If you need to beef up your PC security and resolve any existing infections, you can do so with tools such as a desktop firewall (Sygate or ZoneAlarm, etc.) and an antivirus tool (Symantec/Norton, NOD32, or AVG); and one or more anti-malware tool, as long as the tools don't "fight" each other for control (MS Antispyware, SpywareBlaster, StartUpMonitor, WinPatrol, AdAware, or Spybot S&D.
If you need more information on setting up good software defenses, see "How Much Protection Is Enough?" and "Software Suites Versus Standalone Tools."
Daily Maintenance
Most of the following daily maintenance tasks can be fully automated, or nearly so: Once they're set up, they'll run on their own at night or during the PC's idle times, so little or no human intervention is required. That means your PC can mostly take care of itself!
1) Clean and compact the local mailboxes, throwing out junk mail, and keeping the rest of the mail files densely packed. (This helps to speed searches and to avoid filing problems.) Some mail clients, such as Eudora, let you automate this clean/compact process.
Others, such as Outlook Express, require a few manual clicks. But either way, it's worth doing on a regular basis: Check the help file for your mail client for information on how to do this on your system.
2) Deep-clean the "Temporary Files" areas. Windows automatically creates several scratchpad spaces and holding areas for temporary files based on a percentage of disk space. With today's huge hard drives, you can end up with literally gigabytes of junk files because these areas are normally not cleaned out until they overflow; and even then, will only be cleared to make enough space for whatever new files are arriving there. But "temporary" files, by definition, shouldn't have to be kept around, so almost all this space (minus a little essential housekeeping data that's regenerated with each restart of Windows) can be reclaimed. Windows has some built-in tools like the "Disk Cleanup" utility that can get you started, but you can do much better: The Disk Cleanup utility, for example, has extra, hidden settings you can access if you know how that will do a much better job with much finer control over just what gets kept and what gets thrown out. And some simple, free additions to the built-in tools can get most everything else. You also can automate the entire process so your PC stays lean and clean, with hundreds to thousands of megabytes less of junk files than otherwise. See this for full details.
3) Back up all user files. There are many tools to do this automatically; my preferred method automatically creates a nightly backup and then zip-compresses, encrypts, password protects, and stores the backup on an otherwise unused partition on my hard drive. See this for step-by-step info.
4) Set your antivirus, anti-spyware, and firewall to check automatically for updates at least once a day. (This is usually found in an "Options," "Settings," "Update" or "Schedule" menu item.) Likewise, let Windows Update grab any and all "critical" updates as they become available. If you wish, you can have them auto-install as well. If you prefer an extra, cautionary step, have Windows Update download, but not install the updates, until you give your approval.
5) Defrag at least the C: drive or partition; and any other frequently accessed drives or partitions. On my heavily used system, a daily defrag helps keep my files in contiguous spaces on the hard drive, which speeds access to the files' contents. It also would make any data-recovery --in the event of a catastrophic disk failure -- much simpler and surer. Plus, with only one day's fragmentation to overcome, each nightly defrag proceeds swiftly. But I admit: Daily defrags would be overkill on a lightly used PC; in that case, defrags could be done weekly or monthly; it's up to you. In any case, you can automate the process and allow for unattended defrags by using Defrag's command line options in a script, batch file, or scheduled task.
6) The one manual element in my daily maintenance rituals is to burn the previous night's backup file to CD for long-term offsite storage. I usually do this first thing in the morning while the day's first batch of E-mail is downloading; it takes one blank CD (cost: about 20 cents) and about four minute's time. With these daily CD backups stored away from my PC, my data's safe, even if something horrendous should happen to the PC itself.
By the way, if you'd like help with or a refresher on task automation see "Make Windows XP Self-Maintaining" (many of the concepts there also apply to other versions of Windows) and "Solving Automatic Maintenance Problems".)
Weekly Tasks
The weekly tasks build on the daily tasks, above.
1) Manually verify that all automated daily antivirus, anti-spyware, firewall, and Windows Updates have worked and that all files are current: I do this by "making the rounds" once a week, opening Windows Update and my firewall, antivirus and anti-spyware tools each in turn and manually clicking on each tool's Update option. If the tools have been doing their automated jobs all week, there'll be nothing new to download. But if I find new updates to download, I can grab them, and then recheck the settings of whichever tool I'm in to see why the automated update process failed. This way, I can ensure that all my essential security tools are up to date, and stay that way.
2) Manually update the security tools that don't auto-update: Some of the tools I use, like Spybot Search&Destroy, have no auto-update option. I open tools like this once a week and trigger a manual update, making sure I have the latest versions available.
3) Run a whole-disk, "grand mal" scan with your AV and anti-spyware tools, including tools that don't run automatically on a daily basis. If your security tools were working properly all week, no malware should have made it onto your PC. But it doesn't hurt to check. Some AV and other tools let you schedule a full automatic scan of your files, which is great if it's available -- a full scan can take quite a while. I automate what I can, and then manually trigger the rest, letting each tool search my drive in its own specialized way. The scans almost always come up clean, except for a few harmless, so-called "tracking cookies". In this way, I know that the daily-level protections are doing their job. But if a manual scan finds new problems, I'd be able to fix them on the spot, and then could dig deeper to see which of my security tools failed.
4) Check and process (usually, that means: discard) any files quarantined by AV, antispyware, firewall, etc.: Some security tools set aside problematic files in special quarantine folders. These might be E-mail attachments that contain hostile payloads; or any kind of file thought to be infected or dangerous. Over time, the quarantine folders can grow quite large if you don't check them. You may be able to add some quarantine folders to your daily automated cleanups (step 2 in "Daily Maintenance"); but in any case, it's a good idea to see what, if anything, your security tools are sequestering, and to delete any quarantined files you don't need.
5) Clean the Registry: This only takes a couple minutes, so it's something I do manually, using the tools recommended in "Testing 10 Windows Registry Cleaning Software Packs."
6) Run Chkdsk to verify the basic health of your hard drives: After steps 1-5, above, I like to reboot my system, and that's a perfect opportunity to run Chkdsk. (In XP and Win2K, Chkdsk runs best at reboot, before Windows fully loads.) In earlier version of Windows, Scandisk performs a similar function.
Once A Month
As before, these tasks are additive, building on what has gone before:
1) Check for updates of office-suite tools (word processor, spreadsheet, etc.) via a vendor site like Office Update or equivalent: Non-security-related updates are rarely of critical importance, so I only check for those once a month or so, updating when it makes sense. (Not all updates are equally important; if an update doesn't improve your security, fix a bug, or add a feature that's important to you, feel free to skip it.)
2) Check for new versions/updates/bugfixes of all other major or frequently used software tools: Similar to #1, above, it's a good idea to check periodically for security updates, bug fixes, and new features in all your most-commonly used software utilities and applications.
3) Create a fresh disk image of the entire C: partition, plus any other partitions that have had significant activity in the last month. Store one copy of each image on another partition; also burn a copy of that image to CD or DVD for safe long-term storage off-site: This is the larger version of step #3 in Daily Maintenance; it creates a restorable image of the entire contents of the C: partition. Should I ever need to rebuild my system from scratch, I'd restore the most-recent image of the C: partition, and then restore the most-recent daily backup of the user files (again, from step #3 in Daily Maintenance ). Storing both the images and daily backups on CDs and DVDs also means I can roll my system back to any arbitrary date, and have the system be exactly as it was on that date. On the other hand, if all I need is one file from the backups, I can restore just that one file, too. Thus, I have total restore flexibility, and can recover anything from the past, ranging from a single file to a total setup.
4) Check for an adequate on-hand supply of "consumables;" blank CDRs, DVDs, ink, paper, etc: You may need to do this more or less frequently than I do, but I find a once-a-month inventory of consumables helps prevent those "I'm out of ink and the stores are closed!" panics.
Semi-Annual Steps
With all the foregoing, there's not a lot left to do at longer intervals. But one exception is to look at the PC not so much as an electronic device, but as a mechanical one: Its fans are constantly whirring, drawing dust, fibers, and all manner of airborne debris inside the case. Every six months or so, it can be smart to open the PC and take a look inside: Verify that all the fans are working; clean the vents, the fan blades, the heat exchangers, etc. Full details: "Getting The Grunge Out Of Your PC."
Twice a year or so also is about right for checking your PC's OEM/vendor site for BIOS and driver updates. If you've installed third-party parts, you can separately check those sites, too (e.g., checking for new video drivers).
Annual Clean Ups
If you've been performing the smaller maintenance tasks all along, there's really no need for a huge, year-end blowout. On the other hand, if you've missed steps along the way, then a once-a-year tune-up makes sense, and we've covered that in "Year-End PC Tasks."
About the only other long-term maintenance item you might want to add to the list is to check the batteries in your UPSes, which typically last about one to three years. Replace any worn-out batteries, or the entire UPS, as needed.
Adjusting For Your Needs
Once again, it's worth repeating that the above is probably more thorough than most people need. But the steps are there for you to choose from, adapt, and modify as you wish until you have a maintenance schedule that fits your needs perfectly.
But please don't keep your alterations private -- let us know! There are whole other areas I didn't go into -- peripheral maintenance, for example. And some areas where my own flavor of PC-paranoia admittedly goes off the deep end (my backups have backups!) So what do you think is the right blend? How much -- or how little -- maintenance do you think is just necessary? What steps do you take, and which do you skip? Join the discussion!
To discuss this column with other readers, please visit Fred Langa's forum on the Listening Post.
To find out more about Fred Langa, please visit his page on the Listening Post.
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