8 Ways to Keep Your PC New – DIY Hardware Check-Up

Tip 1. Check your hard drive’s “physical” health

Most new and XP-era drives are equipped with Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology, aka SMART reporting. SMART data is stored within the hard drive itself and can often alert you to impending problems before they get serious.

It’s easy to check the SMART data. Two tools we recommend are PassMark’s DiskCheckup and Active@ DiskMonitorFree. Both programs are free for personal use and also come in commercial versions for organizations.

Tip 2. Check your hard drive’s “logical” health

Run chkdsk.exe to check the integrity of your hard drive’s files and to repair any errors.

Click Start and Run, then type chkdsk c: /f into the Run dialog box. Hit OK.

Chkdsk may tell you that it can’t check the drive because the drive is in use. It will then offer to check the drive at reboot. Type Y (yes) and hit the Enter key.

Repeat for all drives/partitions on your system.

Tip 3. Correct driver errors now, don’t wait!

Just as Microsoft is providing less support for XP, third-party vendors are withdrawing support for older hardware. Soon, you will discover that the drivers you need are no longer available. Fix those driver problems now!

Boot XP and right-click My Computer. Select Properties, Hardware, and then Device Manager. (Or, click Control Panel/System/Hardware/Device Manager.) Click View and select Show hidden devices to make sure you’re seeing everything.

Correct any problem indicated by a yellow exclamation mark or a red X. In most cases, you should get correct or updated drivers from the hardware vendor’s site.

It might also be wise to save copies of any special drivers your system needs; burn them to a CD or DVD, and tuck the disc away in a safe place.

Tip 4. Patch and update Windows and applications

Starting with Windows Update, make sure your operating system is fully up-to-date with all necessary patches, fixes, and updates. Do the same for all your non-Microsoft software, visiting the vendor sites to download any new updates and patches for your applications and utilities. A tool such as Secunia’s outstanding, free-for-home-use Personal Software Inspector (PSI) can make this step a breeze.

Tip 5. Verify system security

Regardless of the antivirus and anti-malware tool(s) you’re using, visit a competing vendor’s site and run their free live or online scan to verify that nothing slipped past your usual defenses.

Next, check that your firewall is providing the protection it should. There are many good, free, online firewall-test sites, such as Hackerwatch and AuditMyPC.

Tip 6. Take out the trash

Needless file clutter makes a system harder to use and slower to operate. For example, AV scans and Windows’ indexing both take longer when they have many junk files to process.

Start by deleting old $NtUninstall{xxx}$ files from XP’s C:Windows folder; these files can occupy a shocking amount of space! You need these files only when a Windows Update fails and you (or the OS) have to roll back your system. If your system is working fine, $NtUninstall files serve no purpose.

Next, wade through your hard drive, folder by folder, making sure files are where they’re supposed to be and that you’re not storing needless duplicates or other useless files.

Next, uninstall obsolete or unused software.

Tip 7. Rein in XP’s three worst space-hogs

System Restore, the Recycle Bin, and browser caches are like black holes for data, and your system can run better if you limit their voracious appetites.

System Restore is at best a limited recovery tool, and it’s not worthwhile to devote vast amounts of disk space to it. Find out how to manage it best.

Windows’ default Recycle Bin can consume hundreds of gigabytes on a large drive. Pare this down to a reasonable size by right-clicking the Recycle Bin and selecting Properties. Reduce the size of the Recycle Bin to a smaller percentage of the total disk space. (Click the disk tab — e.g., Local Disk (C:) — to determine its reserved Recycle Bin space in gigabytes.) Set it to around 500 MB (0.5GB) on large disks and 250MB (0.25GB) on smaller ones.

To reduce Internet Explorer’s cache size, click Tools and Internet Options. Then, under the Browsing History section, click Settings and adjust the cache size downward to, say, 50MB.

For Firefox, click Tools/Options and then click Advanced. Under the Network tab, look for the settings box in the Offline Storage section.

Chrome’s cache-size adjustment uses the command line, as described on a Chrome Help forum page.

Tip 8. Defragment

Once your disk is rid of all unnecessary files and is organized the way you want, run your defragmentation tool to reorder your files for optimal performance. If your disk was badly fragmented, it may take several iterations of defragging to achieve maximum benefit.