Routine computer maintenance
In addition to 
protecting your Windows computer, every Windows user should perform routine maintenance on their computer. This page includes some tips to help. Performing routine maintenance should even make your computer run more quickly!
Table of contents
Install anti-virus software now
Please install the University's anti-virus software package. It's free to all University faculty, staff, and students, both for work and for home use. Go to this page to download:
- https://software.emory.edu/express/
- Locate "Symantec" (if you're a Windows user) or "Norton" (if you're a Mac user) antivirus packages. Click to download and install.
You will need your University username and password to download.
Cleaning unneeded files from your computer
- Installing CCleaner
- CCleaner Analysis
CCleaner is a freeware system optimization tool for Windows. We have had good results using it to improve performance on Windows machines. We recommend that you run it monthly. Here's how to install and run it.
- Download the latest version of ccleaner from http://www.ccleaner.com/ . As of this writing, the current version is Version v2.05.555 (2,670KB) . While ccleaner is free, you can choose to donate money to the developer at the time that you download it.
- Locate the downloaded file and double-click it to install the program. I modify the default options slightly to deselect the desktop icon and to deselect the installation of the Yahoo toolbar.
- Click Finish to exit the installer.
Basic CCleaner Usage
- Locate CCleaner in your start menu and launch it.
- Close any web-browsers that you are running and click the "Analyze" button.
- After a period of time, ccleaner will report the results of its analysis.
- Review the report, and click "Run Cleaner" to actually delete files.
- A warning box will pop up, stating that you are about to delete files.
- If you want to proceed, click "OK". Note that this process will empty your Recycle Bin, so be sure that you don't want anything in the Recycle Bin before proceeding.
- The first time that you run CCleaner, the process may take quite some time. Once it's finished, it will generate another report telling you how many files were deleted.
Advanced CCleaner usage
Please note that advanced ccleaner usage is meant for advanced users who know what they are doing. Most computers will benefit from just running the basic ccleaner tool.
- CCleaner is capable of more than just deleting temporary files. If you want CCleaner to check the registry for issues, click the "Issues" button.
- Click on "Scan for Issues".
- This will take some time, as ccleaner will scan your entire registry looking for problems. It will also check your Start Menu for problems such as missing files.
- Review the reported issues and click "Fix Selected Issues" to have ccleaner attempt to fix them.
- Messing with the registry is serious business, so ccleaner will offer to make a back-up before it starts to work. Save a copy of the registry file.
- Once ccleaner completes its registry repair, it will give you a final report.
Defragmenting your computer's hard disk
Files on hard drives are stored as a series of linked pieces. Over time, files become more and more fragmented. That is, each file is represented by more and smaller pieces. The process of gathering and re-assembling these pieces can dramatically slow down your computer. This is why you should periodically defragment your computer's hard drive. If this is an office computer, we recommend that you do this every one to two months. Because the process is time-consuming, we recommend that you launch this when you will not need your computer for a period of time. Perhaps you could start this process late in the afternoon or time it to run during your lunch break.
There are a number of ways to access the disk defragmentation tool in Windows XP. This is the easiest way to get to it:
- Open My Computer.
- Right-click the local disk volume that you want to defragment, and then click Properties.
- On the Tools tab, click Defragment Now.
- Click Defragment.
Again, this can take a long time. It's not unusual for this process to take two hours on a disk that has not been recently defragmented. The good news is that the process is mostly automatic and, once it's completed, you should see significant performance improvements.
- Open My Computer
- Right Click on My Computer and click Properties
- Click on Tools and click Defragment Now
- Click Defragment
Cleaning temporary files from Firefox
If you use a modern version of Firefox, it's easy to clean out temporary files that may be slowing your computer down. Just see the attached image for the steps to follow, or click on Tools > Clear Private Data. This will pop up a menu asking you if it's ok to proceed.
- Removing temporary files in Firefox.
Cleaning temporary files from IE7
Go to Tools > Delete Browsing History
Then select Delete All
- Tools>Delete Browsing History
- Delete All
Cleaning temporary files from IE6
To clean out temporary files from Internet Explorer 6, just click on Tools > Internet Options. Under Temporary Internet Files, click on Delete Files.
- Deleting temporary files in IE6.
