Chapter 13Maintaining Windows

OBJECTIVES FOR THE NEXT SEVERAL LESSONS

Learn how to set up and perform scheduled preventive maintenance tasks to keep Windows healthy--Today

Learn how to prepare for disaster by keeping good backups of use data and Windows system files

Learn about the directory structures used by Windows and how to manage files and folders

Learn how to use Windows utilities to manage hard drives

2

SCHEDULED PREVENTIVE MAINTENANCE

Windows gets tired after awhile so you will need to do Preventive Maintenance

Alleviates slow computer performance

3

YOUR JOB TODAY

Each time I ask you to go through a process on your computer make a print screen of how you did this and put it in a word document to email to me----100 points on lab grade.

1. VERIFY CRITICAL WINDOWS SETTINGS

Help user by explaining: Automatic Windows updates are very important How to manually check for and install updates

Click Start, and then click Control Panel. Click System and Security, click System, and

then click the Windows Updates tab. Click the option that you want. Make sure Automatic

Updates is not turned off.

Do this now and make

a print screen of what you see5

VERIFY CRITICAL WINDOWS SETTINGS (CONT’D.)

This what you should have seen or something similar

AND 6

THIS

CLEAN UP THE HARD DRIVE

Delete unneeded files occasionally Windows requires some hard drive free space to

function to do the following Normal operation, defragmenting drives, burning CDs

and DVDs, and other tasks

8

CLEAN UP THE HARD DRIVE (CONT’D.)

Yikes this drive only has 1.2G bytes of free space.

All computers need at least 3 Gigs

Use disk cleanup toDo this now and save a print screen ofthe process

9

10

DISK CLEANUP

This is what you should have seen

DEFRAG THE HARD DRIVE

Fragmentation can slow things down also Files fragmented in segments all over the drive

Reasons to defrag Read-write head moves all over to retrieve a file Data-recovery utilities may not work

11

DEFRAG THE HARD DRIVE (CONT’D.)Do this now.Right click on computer properties the tools and click defrag nowClick analyze disk --defrag the disk if it needs it.Save a print screen of this also

12

THIS IS WHAT YOU SHOULD HAVE SEEN

13

CHECK THE HARD DRIVE FOR ERRORS

Chkdsk utility Searches for bad sectors on a volume Recovers data if possible

Error checking and repair time Potentially long depending on drive size and files

Methods to launch Chkdsk utility Drive Properties box Chkdsk command in a command prompt window

14

15

Do this now and complete a print screen This is what you should see

VERIFY STARTUP PROGRAMS

Software programs Add themselves to automatic startup list

Shortcut or program file in a startup folder Registry entry Scheduled Task list entry

Problem with too may startup programs Slow system startup, sluggish system, startup

errors Problem solution

Remove unnecessary programs

16

VERIFY STARTUP PROGRAMS (CONT’D.)

How—Like this –Do it and record your results with print screen

Go to windows site and find Autoruns for windows And clear the check boxes of the programs you

don’t want to run OR

Type in msconfig and go to startup on the menu

17

18

This what you should see if you used msconfig

FREE UP ADDITIONAL HARD DRIVE SPACE

Windows Explorer Displays drive free space

Rule of thumb Shoot for 15 percent of drive free

Move data to other drives or devices Use folder compressions

19

FREE UP ADDITIONAL HARD DRIVE SPACE (CONT’D.)

Reorganize folders and volumes Move applications

Most require reinstall

20

21

Move virtual memory paging file This file is called virtual memory—remember

that??? Windows Pagefile.sys is its actual name

Hidden file stored in C drive root directory

You can move it to save space on the C drive

It is found by doing the following—do this now and do a printscreen of what you did

Got to system properties click on performance settings and then on advanced

Your screen should look similar to this:

22

FREE UP ADDITIONAL HARD DRIVE SPACE (CONT’D.)

Limit space used by Internet Explorer (IE) or any other browser you use Reduce IE cache file space Move cache folder to a second volume (if

available) Set IE to empty cache folder when browser

closes If more space is still needed, add another

hard drive

23

24

Do this and a print screen

25

EMAIL ME YOUR RESULTS

You should have a print screen of each part that we talked about to get an A