Mr. Wasil’s 3rd Grade Class

For my last tech tip of this school year I decided to discuss the maintenance of your computer. I am also going to make this the first tech tip next year too. Here is the scenario-Your computer is slow and sluggish. You are frustrated and then you call your tech guy to help. Well, the first thing us tech guys do is clean up your machine, do an error check and of course check for viruses. You can do a lot of this yourself because the computer comes equipped to do so. I thought the best tech tip to end the year and then start off the year would be this one. Let’s end the year off right by cleaning your computer and making sure it runs at peak performance. The first step is to do a disk clean up. This takes about 3 to 5 minutes. Next, you will defragment your hard drive. This will probably take a lot of you 30-60 minutes so make sure you do not need your computer. You only press a couple of buttons; the computer does the rest for that hour. My computer will only take about 7 minutes to defragment because I do this at least once a month (which is recommended). Wikipedia states under the myths section that defragmenting will probably not make your computer faster, but it has been my personal experience that it does help- especially if you do it at least 1 time a month.Click here for directions on how to defragment and use disk cleanup.

For the internet challenges you will need to clear out your cookies, delete your history and make sure you are running effective antivirus software along with Adware and Spyware protection. Here at school you should be okay. But at home, you need to consider running these programs. Mine are free at home and you can read about them by clicking here. I have been running AVG virus protection for free now for about a year and I love it. Okay, now that I have told you this, here’s what I want you to do. Follow these directions by clicking here. Try to do this monthly and you will be happy with your computer. As always, thanks for reading and please consider trying this on your own. It is very important and will save you lots of headaches in the future.