Basic Home Computer Maintenance

I am not a computer geek, but being a former ICafe owner I have learned many things in the computer maintenance.  From crimping rj 45 to a cable, hardware diagnosis and replacement, formatting and operating system configurations, virus removal and troubleshooting.  I have learned these things through joining ULOP (Unified Lanshop Owner's Portal), reading, and through a very good friend Bien my Guru, who patiently teaches me how to do computer related problems and to my son JM who is now an IT and other fellow Ulopians who are very unselfish and willing to help. Through trial and error, in the beginning I suffered an electric shock by just simply opening the case of the CPU (Central processing Unit), my finger got wounded in the crimping tool, broke some parts inside the CPU but I just charged it to experience lol.  I believe that practice makes perfect, and the knowledge I acquired saved me a lot of money from paying a computer technician every now and then

What are the actions performed to keep a computer system functioning well? Here are some basic tips that I will share to you:

•  First and foremost, you must know the specifications of your system. Go to Start > run >  (type) dxdiag > click OK, a prompt box will appear, click Yes, then DirectX Diagnostic Tool box will appear. From there you will see your unit’s specification.
• Do not throw away driver cds of your motherboard, video card, webcam, printer etc.  You will need it again in case you need to format your unit. If it has been misplaced or no where to be found, don’t worry, you can download these drivers from the manufacturer’s website
•  Use a legit Operating System software.  Take advantage of the important system updates.
•  Never forget to install an Anti-virus software and update it regularly. As much as possible learn how to configure your anti-virus.
•  Help your anti-virus in capturing malicious files or folders by setting the folder options to Show Hidden Files and Folders. Go to My Computer > click Tools > click Folder Options > click View > in the Advanced Settings, tick on the Show hidden files and folders then uncheck Hide extensions for known files types.
•  Turn off Auto-run or Auto play properties of your system. Auto run viruses are very common in removable flash disks that freely enters our computer system. 
•  Edit the Start-up configuration in your system configuration utility.  This is to improve system startup times.
•   Take time to sort out and clean up your personal files, categorize it into folders for convenience.
•   Defrag.  A Disk Defragmenter is a Utility designed to increase access speed by rearranging files stored on a disk to occupy contiguous storage locations, a technique commonly known as defragmenting. The purpose is to optimize the time it takes to read and write files to/from the disk by minimizing head travel time and maximizing the transfer rate. 
•  Lastly, back up your files from time to time.

Happy Computing everyone!