Detox your computer
January, the beginning of another year, but to most people it also marks a time to clear out the old junk and prepare to start anew. Everyone makes resolutions to become healthier, exercise more and eat properly, but PC Tools is urging people go an extra step in their digital lives – and clean up their hard drives in celebration of National Clean Up Your Computer month.
Almost 80% of Brits were frustrated with their PCs in 2010 according to a recent YouGov survey . With top frustrations including programs running slowly (44%) and slow start-up speeds (40%), PC Tools has provided five simple ways to speed up your computers and get them ready for the digital year ahead.
1. Back up your digital memories
Photos of your baby’s first Christmas or New Year’s Eve festivities are irreplaceable, with Brits finding them to be more valuable than their music collections or work. One of the most reliable methods of helping to protect and preserve valuable digital memories is to back up on a portable hard drive.
2. Keep your internet security up-to-date
Update your virus protection and run a full system scan. Cleaning your PC of any malware, Trojans and spyware will help your PC perform better and help protect you from identity theft.
3. Delete Unused Applications/Files
Once you’ve taken care of these maintenance basics, you can really start cleaning. Delete duplicate files and remove programs that haven’t been used for a year. Not only will you benefit from more hard drive space and a less cluttered start menu, but your computer will run faster too.
4. Defragment your hard drive
Don’t be shocked, but your computer can get sloppy. Through daily use of your PC, your computer is constantly trying to access files and data in multiple parts of your hard disk. Each time files are updated and increase in size, your computer saves the additional data on the next area of free space that’s available and sufficiently large to store that data. This free space is often found far away from other sectors of the file, resulting in a fragmented file system and slowing down your system. An occasional defrag of your system will let those segments find each other again and speed up your PC.
5. Clean your registry
Practically everything you do in Windows is recorded somewhere in the Registry and rarely deleted, leaving a system that may be susceptible to crashes, poor performance and errors. Investing in a PC performance product which includes a registry cleaner will leave you with a faster computer and may also provide you with improved privacy and other benefits.
“Computers are a bit like cars: in order to maintain optimum performance, they need regular servicing. Following a few simple steps at the start of the year and some regular light maintenance will not only make it faster but minimize user frustrations throughout the year,” said Richard Clooke, Worldwide Review Program Manager at PC Tools. “Our solutions are used by millions of customers to help them enjoy their digital lifestyles to the full, for both protection and performance, and by automating these steps we don’t add to users’ frustrations.”
PC Tools offers protection, performance and backup tools to help alleviate user concerns and frustrations with their digital lives. PC Tools Simple Backup is a new tool that safeguards your memories and provides a “set-and-forget” solution to help store and keep your data secure—from pictures and videos to valuable personal documents. PC Tools Performance Toolkit automates regular maintenance processes to keep PCs running in tip-top shape, while PC Tools Spyware Doctor with AntiVirus and Internet Security offer award-winning security that uses multi-layered protection to stop threats at every entry point.