Let's get this out of the way, i'm in no way a tech guy so technical terms will fly right over my head. What i'm looking for is just some basic info and maintenance recomendations to keep my home pc running smooth. Let me give you some background so you know what i am working with. I have a dell running windows 7 home, i have BitDefender for antivirus. I run a scan every 4 or 5 weeks and so far so good. The PC is 6 months old. I was reading a thread here and someone mentioned that windows will over time just get bogged down and with proper maintenance you can prevent that from happening. Should i also download say malwarebytes and run that to scan my system? What other things should i be doing to keep my machine clean and running well? Please keep iin mind that i'm not technical, so any suggestions about going into the registry and doing this and that will go nowwhere. My wife and i are pretty careful with our money since we have for kids and she's on maternity leave. Any help would be great, thanks guys.
How much downloading are you doing? Or data swapping? Are you using USB keys or other portable hard drives on other systems and the plugging them back into your home system? Are you busy clicking on every pop up window? If not I wouldn't worry so much about virus... I use only AVG free and haven't (knock on wood) had many virus problems. It all really depends on how you use your machine. More info helps us to help you.
We don't do any gaming, we don't click on any pop-ups or download anything except the odd song. We try to be safe in our surfing, it's just that our old PC just got to a point where it wouldn't run properly anymore so we had to upgrade. I was just wondering if there was more i could do to keep the system clean. We shut down the system 4 or 5 days a week, sometimes i forget.
Sorry, but sites like that confuse the crap outta me lol. There are just so many things there which i don't even know if i need them. I was just hoping some of you more technical guys just suggest some things i could do to better protect our system.
Nice one. For the OP: Don't you worry too much. As Slip said, it depends on what you're doing with your computer. I run Win7 64 bit on one of my computers and it works well for about half a year now. If you really want to play save, get an external drive, make a backup of your important stuff and format your drives from time to time. I don't know whether Dell provides a HDD recovery tool or something, but even without it's not much work and your system will run for ages.
Ok this could be an issue. Depending on where and how you 'download'... if it's from iTunes store and other commercial online deals then you're probably fine. If it's via torrents or direct downloads like Rapidshare etc. then it could be an issue for in infection etc. Don't add anything you don't need. If you're not up on computers then your system will get a bit fat just installing stuff with the default options on software. But from the sounds of it... you guys aren't even using it that much to begin with so that shouldn't be an issue either. I leave mine running all the time. Just leaving your system running all the time really isn't going to harm it as long as you have good ventilation and cooling.
Regarding the external drive, well i have one but i have it connected to my old PC because the new PC cannot recognize it for some reason. I've read that others have the same issue with windows 7 and the simpletech drives. So what i do now is backup my important stuff to a usb drive and save it to the external via my old PC. I also burn a cd with the important stuff. As far as downloading the songs, it's via itunes. I refuse to use torrents, rapidshare, peer to peer stuff for this reason alone. I've heard too many stories of people having issues with that. So would i be going over the top with getting malware bytes to scan for malware?
I also run CCleaner and Defragger on a fairly regular basis, and at least once every 6 months go through my folders and have a tidy up. Surprised about the Windows 7 external drive problem. I run Vista on my laptop (supposedly far inferior) and have two external drives (I believe in backing up everything since losing some important stuff and with HDD memory so cheap) one is USB2 the other Firewire. Both work okay
Yea but Windows 7 has generally has problems using USB ports from time to time. It's for example difficult to get a modem running via USB on Win7. Don't know why anybody would do that, though. But to the OP: Why don't you simply get a new external drive? You get 1-2 TB for under roundabout 100 $, and as far as I can tell you don't seem to have that much traffic so it should easily be enough.
The most important thing you need to do is backup regularly and keep that backup safe. You don't have to back up the whole system. Just the stuff that's important to you and your wife. Given that you don't download much, I think I'm safe in assuming you don't do a lot of installing and removing software and pretty much stick to what came with the machine. That being the case I wouldn't worry too much about keeping your registry clean since it won't be seeing much action of note. Useful utilities to have include; CCleaner - fixes registry problems. Malwarebytes - removes stubborn malware. An anti-virus application. Microsoft Security Essentials, Avira Anti-Virus, AVG should all suit your needs. You only need one. But it doesn't hurt to have another. A live Linux disc for recovering data if the worst happens. I recommend Ubuntu. It runs well on most Dell machines. Linux is another operating system like Windows. But don't worry it's free so it won't cost you anything and it'll run right off the CD so you don't even need to install it. What you do need is a blank CD to burn it onto. Just download the iso image and when that's done right click on the file and click "burn to disc" or "write to disc". Other than the anti-virus software you don't need to have all that stuff installed on your PC all the time. Just burn the installer files to a CD and keep it safe. I know the last part might seem a bit daunting for you. Just follow the instructions on the Ubuntu web page. Take your time to read them over. And remember the desktop version lets you run right off the CD so you don't need to install it.
I've never heard of simpletech. But I had a quick look on the interwebs. Seems as though they use their own driver for their disks for some reason. Download the latest driver for Windows 7 and see if that makes a difference. If it doesn't I'd recommend you ditch the simpletech drive and get a USB SATA hard drive dock like this one. Then you can buy normal internal SATA hard drives and use them as external drives. The best part is you can pick up internal drives really cheaply.
Defragging brings only minimal advantages unless your files are seriously scattered around in tiny wee bits.
CCleaner - Cleans your junk and registry issues Defrag your HD - Windows has a tool for this and only needs to be done once every few months Setup Windows Backup - You wont be sorry you did if your hard drive fails Create a restore point every month - Trust me on this one DO NOT install multiple antivirus'. Sorry aikiwolfie, but more does hurt. They conflict with each other and your PC begins to run very sluggish. But his recommendations for Antivirus clients were good, especially since most are free. AVG, Avira, Personally I use Panda Cloud Antivirus. Download Malwarebytes - Stay away from the premium version though, The live scanners will conflict with your antivirus so you don't need it. When you first run it, it will offer you a trial of the premium version, just click decline. It's a great software if you ever do get infected with malicious software and will usually remove it. But once your infected, it's hard to install this software and if the virus is bad enough it will prevent the software from running all together so having it preloaded can save you headaches and trips to a PC repair shop.
Thanks for the advice guys. I installed CCleaner and ran that and will keep doing what i'm doing as it sounds we'll be pretty safe. As far as the external drive goes, i spent many hours online trying to figure it out and read on the windows help board about others having the same issues with win 7. Tried many things and even had it working for a bit but then it stopped. I thought it may be due to the usb port not having enough power supply but i don't know. It works fine on my Win xp old computer which is an IBM, so i'll stick with what i'm doing now.
That's not really what I meant. Although I have had more then on anti-virus app installed and running at the same time with no ill effects in the past. It depends on how the apps themselves work and how deeply they burrow into your system.
