Easy Ways to Maintain Your Laptop

This is a quick lens on how to fix your laptop. Even though I am not a computer expert, I have fixed many, many peoples laptops. If you will follow some simple steps, you won't ever be needing help. Laptops are more and more common these days at work and on campus and at home. Laptops are starting to become what cell phones are. Everyone seems to have one. This is common sense stuff that I wish everyone knew how to do. It isn't a big deal and you can be what most people love to classify themselves as - "computer illiterate" Even that isn't an excuse!

So here we go. Here is how you are going to fix your own laptop. Another thing to make sure you do is to keep your eye out for other sites like the one I found that talks about fixing laptops.

1. Check your hard drive. Right click on your C drive and select properties. Look at the cute little pie chart and see how much space you have. Chances are you have stuff on there that isn't needed. So...delete it! The easiest ways to do this are to go through your pictures, music, and programs and take off what isn't needed. And don't forget to empty your recycle bin. A few days ago I helped a friend who had 300 MB left on her hard drive. The first thing I did was empty her recycle bin and she then had 3.84 GB free.

2. Decide what you which programs you want to run at startup and stop the other ones. You easily save tons of time just by not letting programs run at startup. I wanted to explain how to do this, but there is a better page here if you are interested. Its easy and it doens't take a genius.

3. When you have some extra time -- and I do mean EXTRA time, run disk utility and disk clean up. Its going to take a while since most of you have never done it. Its really simple. Start -> Run -> "cleanmgr" and follow the directions.

4. Reformat. I should have put this at the top of the list. Find a friend with an external hard drive and back up all your pictures, music, etc, then totally wipe your hard drive clean. This is awesome. Don't be afraid to do this. Its kind of like an oil change for your computer, you need it.

5. Research anti-virus software and get something that works for you. I won't promote any particular company or software, but I recommend talking to your "computer friend" who we all seem to have and see what they think. Get it installed and keep it up to date.

6. Turn off your computer every once in a while. Give it a break. Restart it. You will be surprised how much that will fix.

7. Use "lighter" programs. There programs out there that all accomplish the same tasks, but just do it better. Don't be afraid to try Firefox - although the web browser war is pretty heated, I personally notice a huge difference using Firefox vs IE. Search out other programs you could use that won't bog down your system.

8. Ask around and learn!

I've just explained the "Fixing Your Laptop for Dummies" version of how to get your laptop up and running. Tech experts can help you a lot more, but for the average user, these simple steps will help you fix and maintain your laptop like you've never seen before.