Step 6: Maintenance and drivers

Defrag

Just like your car should have occasional tune-ups, your computer needs them as well. If you’ve followed the instructions in these lessons, your computer should be running better and faster. But you’ll still need to tune it up once in a while.

The biggest and simplest thing, akin to changing your car’s oil, is defragmenting--or defragging--your hard drive. It’s a good idea to do this about once a month.

When your computer stores files on your drive, it puts them in whatever empty space is available. The result is that over time individual files are actually split up and stored in several places on the drive. (Imagine a library where the different chapters of a book are on different shelves.)

Defragging puts those pieces together so your computer spends less time accessing the files. The procedure is simple:

Shut down any running programs.

Disable your screensaver by right-clicking anywhere on your desktop, choosing Personalize, then clicking Screen Saver. Set it to "None".

Click the Start orb and then Computer; right-click on your hard drive.

Choose Properties, then click the Tools tab.

Click "Defragment Now".

In the box that appears, it’s a good idea to check "Run on a schedule" to have Windows defrag your drive automatically every month.

Drivers

You should also keep your drivers updated. Drivers are pieces of software that let your computer work with your hardware. There are printer drivers, videocard drivers, audio drivers, and so on.

Hardware manufacturers often update this software, but don’t always send those updated out automatically.

Here’s what to do:

From your Control Panel, double-click Windows Update.

Click "Change settings" on the left side.

Make sure "Install updates automatically" is checked, and that it installs them every day.

Make sure both "Include recommended updates" is checked--that will tell Windows to get recommended updates as well as critical ones.

Click OK.

Back on the Windows Update screen, click "Check for updates" and let it do its thing.

Finally, every month or two, clean out your files and use a registry cleaner to keep your registry up to speed.

The measures we’ve covered in this course will help speed your computer, but they’re only the tip of the iceberg. There are hundreds of other changes you can make, and the only limitation is how deep you’re willing to delve into your system.

A number of Web sites are dedicated to helping people squeeze every last drop of speed from their machines. Searching for "speed up Vista" or "Windows Vista speed tweaks" will help you find some.

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