General PC Maintenance and Troubleshooting

By: Iphtkhar Alam

Top Five PC Problems

• 5. “The Blue Screen of Death”

• 4. Printer Issues

• 3. Issues With the “Green Screen”

• 2. Network Connectivity (User Logons)

• 1. E-Mail (Sending/Receiving)

Characteristics of Virus and Spyware Infection

• Extremely Slow Processing

• Inability to open programs

• Internet Homepage gets changed

• Constant redirection to unscrupulous websites

• Phishing/Scamming emails sent to your inbox

Ways to keep your PC running smoothly

• Reboot at least once a week

• Run a virus scan and update once a week

• Defragment your PC once a month

• Run disk clean up once a month

• Run spybot once at least once a week

How to Defrag your PC

• Left click on Start

• Choose Programs, Accessories, System Tools, and Disk Defragmenter

• Choose Analyze (it will tell you if you have anything to defrag. or not)

• If you do, choose Defragment

How to use disk Clean Up

• Left click on Start

• Choose Programs, Accessories, System Tools, and Disk Cleanup

• Choose the drive you want to clean (C drive)

• Let it scan

• Check all the boxes

• Click OK

How to use Spybot

• Left click on Start• Choose Programs, Spybot: Search and Destroy• Search for Updates (found on left side)• Check boxes and download all updates• Choose Safer-networking #1 (it is fast)• Choose Search and Destroy and Check for Problems

(found on left side)• Infections will appear in red• If you have infections, mark them (with a checkmark)

and choose Fix Selected Problems

Websites of Interest

• Anti-Virus

• www.grisoft.com• Spybot Search and Destroy• www.safer-networking.org• Adaware SE

• http://www.lavasoftusa.com/software/adaware/

• Free Online Virus Scan• Housecall.trendmicro.com