Computer Maintenance

Last Updated: 1 July 2009

It can be very frustrating when your computer begins to run slowly, or show unexpected behaviour such as pop-ups, advertisements, and so on. Also, you've no doubt been in a situation where your PC "freezes" and nothing will get it going again so you have to switch the power off. You will notice that Windows doesn't like that and will often run ScanDisk to check for errors. You've probably found that the system has always recovered fully - but eventually it won't.

System "crashes" are a major cause of data loss and system failure. Although system failures are part of computing, you can reduce their frequency by keeping your system running as smoothly and efficiently as possible. This is done by running maintenance programs on a regular basis to clear up disk space, help programs run faster, check for hardware problems, etc.

System slowness, and advertisement popups, are more commonly caused by Spyware programs. These are programs that can be invisibly downloaded to your computer when you download or receive other files. The result is that your computer can become very slow, crash, or even worse, be hacked by the spyware producers. It is important that you regularly scan for Spyware programs. If your current scanning program won't do that, check out Spyware & Adware Remover.