Archive for Maintenance

Hey IT Nerd! Do PC Speed-Up Programs Work?

Posted in Tips with tags , on July 16, 2013 by itnerd

In my opinion, whatever gains that you might get from them wouldn’t be any different than following my tips to keep their PC running in tip top shape. The only difference is that my tips are free and PC Speed-Up programs cost money. Thus I would not bother to pay the money for any of these programs. Instead, I’d just put in some work (which isn’t a lot) to do what I’ve suggested to get the same result. Your bank account and your PC will thank you for it.

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Hey IT Nerd! What Do I Need To Do To Maintain My Mac?

Posted in Tips with tags , on November 8, 2012 by itnerd

About ten minutes after I posted this article, I got a pile of e-mails from Mac fanbois users demanding equal time. Okay then. Much like the PC, my suggestions make up a very short list as OS X really does a lot for you such as defragmentation of the hard disk. But there are two things that I do recommend that you do once a month:

  • Update OS X: Make sure that you’ve got the latest patches installed as they squash bugs and make your Mac safer.
  • Run Disk Utility: This alone will keep your Mac healthy. The steps to do vary depending on which version of OS X you are currently running. There’s an Apple Support document on this here, but here’s what you need to know from that document:
  1. Start from the Recovery System or Internet Recovery (OS X Lion or Mountain Lion).
    If your computer shipped with a Mac OS X Install disc, insert the installation disc, and restart the computer while holding the C key.
  2. If using a Recovery partition or Internet Recovery (OS X Lion and later): When your computer finishes starting up, choose Disk Utility from the Utilities window.
    If using an installation disc: Choose Disk Utility from the Installer menu.
    Important: If you started from an installation disc, do not click Continue in the first screen of the Installer. If you do, you must start from the disc again to access Disk Utility.
  3. Click the First Aid tab.
  4. Click the disclosure triangle to the left of the hard drive icon to display the names of your hard disk volumes and partitions.
  5. Select your OS X volume.
  6. Click Repair. Disk Utility checks and repairs the disk.

If you feel that you need some other tool to do this, I recommend DiskWarrior which I’ve reviewed previously. I highly recommend it as it’s great at bringing data back from the dead and making sure you stay out of trouble. The truth is that the tools that come with OS X work just fine for most users. So don’t feel that you have to do get DiskWarrior to keep your Mac in tip top shape.

  • Run a tool like Onyx or Crap Cleaner to clean up crap: There are two tools that I recommend for cleaning up temp files and the like off of your hard drive. Onyx is the best known tool out there for this sort of thing and is frequently updated for a variety of versions of OS X. But recently Crap Cleaner has appeared on the Mac. PC users have used this for years and it’s worked quite well over there. The Mac version is equally as effective.
  • Back up your Mac: Bad things happen to good Macs. Thus it’s always good to make sure you have a current backup. You can get some suggestions from an article that I wrote on the subject.

That’s pretty much it. If you do those things, you Mac will always run at top speed.

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Hey IT Nerd! What Do I Need To Do To Maintain My PC?

Posted in Tips with tags , on November 7, 2012 by itnerd

Contrary to popular belief, not a whole lot actually. Here’s a list of things that I recommend that you do once a month in the following order:

  • Update Windows: If your copy of Windows is up to date with all of the latest patches, then it’s going to be reasonably secure. Not to mention that any bugs that are out there are going to be fixed.
  • Use Crap Cleaner: There’s a great freeware tool out there called Crap Cleaner. I use it to clean all the crap that Windows seems to want to create, such as temp files and the like. Plus it will also clean up your registry. I highly recommend it.
  • Run Windows Disk Error Checking: You want to make sure that you find out about any problems that may be lurking on your hard disk early enough so that you can fix them or take more evasive action. Fortunately, Windows has built in tools for that. Simply right click your hard drive in My Computer and click Properties and then Tools. You’ll see the option for error checking your hard disk and it’s pretty straightforward to use. You will need to restart your computer to make it happen though.
  • If you have Windows XP, defrag your hard disk: Unlike Windows Vista and Windows 7, XP users need to defrag their hard disk from time to time to make sure that everything on it is accessed in an optimal manner. You don’t need to buy any extra tools to do this. Simply right click your hard drive in My Computer and click Properties and then Tools. You’ll see the option for defragmenting your hard disk and it’s pretty straightforward to use.
  • Uninstall any programs that you don’t need: If there are programs on your hard disk and you don’t use them, at the very least they’re taking up space. At worst, they’re stealing CPU cycles that can be better used elsewhere. So if you don’t use it, remove it. After you uninstall, it might be handy to run Crap Cleaner again to make sure that everything is gone.
  • Back up your PC: You should always have your data safely backed up in case the worst happens. I’ve got tips on that here.

That’s pretty much it. It doesn’t require anything more than that and you’ll find that your PC will run as good as it possibly can.

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