Maintaining Your Computer

Is your new (or relatively new) computer slowing down? Perhaps the cause is you — or your past activities — that are causing your computer to slow. Keeping your hard disk clean and healthy can go a long ways toward keeping your computer speedy. Just like changing the oil on your car every so often, your computer needs some preventive maintenance done to it.

• Weekly — Remove temporary files
• Weekly — Scan hard drive for errors
• Monthly — Defragment hard drive

These tasks can be scheduled to run automatically so that you won’t have to remember to do them. Complete instructions (with pictures) on how to do this are posted on Microsoft’s At Home site: Put Your PC Mainteance Routine on Autopilot.