How to clean and repair your personal computer

Disk Defragmenter is simple to use and can easily restore speed back to your computer. Below you will find the steps to run Disk Defrag successfully.

1. Click the Start button, then click All Programs, then click Accessories, then click System Tools, and finally, click Disk Defragmenter.

2. When the Disk Defragmenter window opens you should see a list of all the hard drives connected to your computer. Click on the hard drive you wish to defrag to select it, then click Defragment.

Depending on the size of the hard drive it can take any where between 10 minutes to a few hours to complete the defragmenting process, but once its complete you should see an increase in your computers speed.

There are programs available these days though that takes the guess work out of dealing with Disk Defragmenter. Here's a list of a few I have personally used before to clean up my computer.

Bug Doctor - Simple to use software that can handle the toughest grime on your computer!

System Mechanic 7 - Repair, speed-up, and protect your PC - Special discount offer!


PC Registry Cleaner - One of the best cleaning software, hands down! Tons of features make this one of my favorites to use when cleaning someone's computer.

Disk Cleanup is one of the easiest ways to clean and repair your personal computer.

1. Click the Start button, then click "All Programs", then click "Accessories", then click "System Tools", then click Disk Cleanup.

2. Once Disk Cleanup starts it should give you the option to select which hard drive you would like to clean. **It defaults to your primary hard drive**

3. Once you select the drive it may take a few seconds for it to load. **Running Disk Defragmenter will speed this step up tremendously**

4. Once Disk Cleanup is ready it should give you several different options to use to clean your personal computer.

List of Default Options
1. Downloaded Program Files
2. Office Setup Files
3. Recycle Bin
4. Setup Log Files
5. Temporary Files
6. Web Client/Publisher Temporary Files
7. Compress old files
8. Catalog files for content viewer
**There are additional options located under the "More Options" tab at the top of the Disk Cleanup window.

5. Mark each checkbox you would like to clean then click "OK". A progress window should open showing the progress of Disk Cleanup as it completes the requested tasks.

6. Once Disk Cleanup is finished reboot your personal computer to verify the changes have been made.

Once your computer has rebooted it should be running faster and more efficent.

If you use Internet Explorer often then chances are you have space being used on your computer to hold all those sites you have visited before which eventually starts taking up valuable processing space on your personal computer's hard drive. Cleaning and repairing those files will restore some of your personal computers speed and processing power.

1. Open Internet Explorer.

2. Click the text labeled, "Tools" at the top of the Internet Explorer window.

3. On the popup menu click, "Internet Options" located at the bottom of the list.

4. By default the General tab opens. From this tab you can control your startup page via the Homepage area, Delete cookies and temporary Internet files (Plus change their settings), Clear your history (As well as setting the amount of days to keep the history), and finally the four buttons at the bottom which control the colors, fonts, languages, and accessibility settings.

5. Click the Delete Temporary Internet Files button. This will delete all the images, files, and content that your computer saved while loading each web page you visited on the Internet.

6. Cookies can also be deleted, but be warned... This will remove all login names and passwords you use for your websites so delete these only if you feel comfortable re-entering your login info for each website. Otherwise leave them alone.

7. History doesn't take alot of space if you have it set properly. Anything less than 15 days should be fine for most cases. Besides if there is a site you really like, save it as a bookmark for later.

Following the steps I provided above, your personal computer cleaning and repair should be simple and easy to maintain.

You see it sitting over there with all kinds of stuff in it. You know it's been awhile, but you can't seem to actually remember when the last time you did it... The Recycle Bin is helpful if you actually delete something by mistake, but most of the time everything you do want deleted just sits in there taking up precious space (We didn't want it so we "Deleted" it...) Well, just DUMP IT!

1. Right click your Recycle Bin, and click "Empty Recycle Bin".

2. Listen to sound effects while Windows empties the bin.

3. Move on to something else.

Forgetting to empty the Recycle Bin can lead to problems so make sure you empty it often. Even with hard drive sizes increasing into the Terabytes our file sizes just continue to grow with them so we still need to empty the Recycle Bin often to maintain good personal computer cleaning and repair habits.

Contrary to popular belief, having tons of folders and files on your desktop will slow your startup and average processing speeds down quite a bit.

1. Start by creating folders for things that you can group together. (e.g. Pictures I took from last year when your uncle past out in the ditch should go in a folder labeled, "Drunk Uncle 2005".)

2. Right click your desktop and you should get a popup with the option to create a new folder. (It will also highlight its name so you can change it.)

3. Once you have all the folders created that you will need then start dragging the items to their proper folder.

4. Now that you have everything moved, create a new folder called, "Desktop Backup". Place all the folders you created into this folder. (You can burn this folder to a disk, CD or DVD, and have a backup of it for later as well.)

5. Finally, open My Computer and select one of the available hard drives. Move this folder into the hard drive you selected.

6. Having more than one hard drive is helpful because you can move this "Desktop Backup" folder to another drive other than your main hard drive, and by doing so you restore much needed space that can be used by the operating system.

Cleaning that desktop can improve start up times tremendously, as well as increasing the overall performance of your personal computer. Maintaining your desktop is just one of the many ways of to achieving personal computer cleaning and repair on a daily basis.

Ever hate waiting for Windows to "Finally" load completely? Well most of the startup lags occur because of all the programs set to start with Windows. There are several things you can do to stop every program from starting which will speed up your Window's startup tremendously.

1. Click your Start button, then click All Programs. Look for a folder labeled, "Startup".

2. Anything you find in this folder will start with Windows so delete them all so that the folder is empty.

3. These are actually shortcuts, not the orginal program so don't think that deleting these will delete that particular program. It simply removes the shortcut to that program so it doesn't start automatically with Windows.

4. **ADVANCED USERS ONLY** Click your Start button and find "Run..." and click it.

5. When it opens type in, "msconfig".

6. This should open a new window labeled, "System Configuration Utility", with several tabs. Find and click the, "startup", tab.

7. On this tab you can basically uncheck everything you know you don't want to start. Be careful though cause if something particular isn't started you may not have programs that work properly until they are rechecked on this tab and started with Windows.

8. Click "Ok" at the bottom and it will ask you if you would like to restart. Restart and when Windows starts to load you should see a noticable difference in startup times.

9. You will get a message box concerning the Selective Startup so find and check the checkbox next to "Don't show this next time" (Something similar to that, :0) ).

Now you have another method to achieving maximum personal computer cleaning and repair!

After a few months of using your computer, your computer can build up tons of installed programs and files that can wittle down your hard drive space until your computer slows down to a crawl.
To use Add/Remove Programs follow these steps:

1. Click Start, then Control Panel, then Add/Remove Programs.
2. This will open the Add/Remove Programs window that will contain a list of all the programs currently installed on your computer.
3. Simply click "Remove" next to each item you don't use any more and would like to remove from your computer.
4. Repeat for each additional program you want to delete.

Reboot your computer to make sure it saves all the changes and you should notice an increase in overall speed once your computer restarts.

After about 3 to 6 months of constant use be sure to open your computer case and clean it out to prevent your cooling fans from clogging up on you. Lint, dust, and other particles get stuck and build up over time on these cooling fans which slowly add weight until the fan can't keep the computer's processor from overheating. If the fans stop enough for the processor to get too hot the processor will be ruined.
Simply opening your computer up and cleaning it all out from time to time will prevent losing an expensive computer to overheating.