PC Clinic
PC / Mac Health
Our PC Clinic team got together and came up with the following suggestions to keep your machine running well.
Antivirus / Anti-malware
We cannot stress this enough, please use our free McAfee (or Sophos on a Mac) software to protect your computer. We recommend that you run a full scan each week.
Backup your data
If you run antivirus software and backup your data, you'll avoid 90% of the problems most users encounter (Yes OK, we made that number up, but you get the picture!).
Run System updates on your machine
Whether it's running Mac OS X or Windows.
Other things you can do to keep your machine running well
Windows Users:
Switch on System Restore
This means if your system does get corrupted, you, or the PC Clinic, can restore it back to a working version and recover files for you.
Defragmentation
Windows Vista and Windows 7: These suggestions by Microsoft may help speed up your computer, the defragmenting and freeing up hard drive space should be run every 2-4 weeks: Optimize Windows 7 / Vista and Windows 7 / Vista Top Ten Tips.
Windows XP: ignore steps 1, 2 and 5, but 3 and 4 (freeing up space and defragmenting) will help keep your system tidy. We'd recommend every 2 to 4 weeks for these: Improve Windows XP Preformance.
Our Student PC Clinic technicians use the IOBit Smart Defrag software to defrag their hard drives, but for most of you the built-in Microsoft software will do the job.
Mac Users:
Repair your disk permissions, this doesn't need to be done too frequently so set a reminder every month or two. Apple Repair Information.
Drivers
Drivers allow the Operating System, e.g. Windows, to access and run the hardware inside your machine.
When you receive an error that a driver is not working correctly, you can usually fix this yourself by searching the internet with keywords similar to model number driver and selecting your operating system. For example, if you use an Nvidia 8800GT graphics card you would search Nvidia 8800GT drivers. Sometimes it can be a bit harder to search and you will need to go and look for it on the manufacturer's website. If you don't know the model number of the hardware then use the manufacturer's website and search through a Drivers or Downloads section.
Once you have obtained the drivers for your operating system, save them to your desktop. In windows, click Start, right click on Computer and select Properties. In Windows 7 / Windows Vista, device manager is usually on the left side. In Windows XP, it is one of the tabs on top. Click on it and you will see a list of all the parts in your PC. Anything that shows an exclamation mark suggests there is a fault somewhere. When you double click it you can see its status and then uninstall the driver in order to install the new one you have downloaded.
If you have any issues, come and see us in the Student PC Clinic.