Techiebytes

"Murphy was an optimist" is posted on Adam Mahle’s cubical wall. Adam is our "Nick Burns" at The Society and has the joy of fixing all those wonderful workstation issues that arise from day to day. After watching trouble tickets, user frustrations, and being in this business for over 15 years, I’d almost agree with Adam and his sign.

I say “almost” because the majority of computer problems can be avoided through simple maintenance and troubleshooting. You wouldn’t drive your car for four years without an oil change, but it’s acceptable to continually run a computer without general maintenance. Computer maintenance is key to keeping your computer healthy and in turn keeping you happy.

One of the easiest ways to complete computer maintenance is simply visiting the Windows Live OneCare Safety Scanner. This free online tool will protect, clean-up, and tune your computer all with a single click. While you can run each of the included options directly from Windows, why bother when this makes it so easy? One thing you should note is computer maintenance takes time, don’t start this tool in the morning and expect to work. It’s best to run this as your walking out the door for the night and finish it up when you get back to the office.

Another part of you maintenance plan should be software updates. Software updates not only help stabilize your system but help with computer security. Most software today has an option to automatically update that is enabled by default. If you’ve disabled your updates you’ll have to remember to go looking for them from time to time.

Even with the best maintenance program problems will still to arise. The first step in any troubleshooting effort is the easiest. That’s right – the support guys’ mantra that you’ve heard at least a hundred times: Reboot. Rebooting cleans out any conflicting programs or settings that the computer might be storing, and in many cases this will resolve your issue. In the worst case you know you’re working with a clean slate to help identify the issue.

If your computer just recently started having issues you might consider restoring it to a previous date. Windows System Restore allows you to go back in time to when the computer was working properly and reset the machine. This restore doesn’t delete your data; it only resets system settings so it’s another safe and easy troubleshooting solution.

In Windows Vista there is an additional tool you may want to evaluate. The Reliability and Performance monitor tracks system changes and outages to allow you to see what’s changed on your system. If a specific update or software installation is creating problems you can use the add/remove software solution to stabilize your system.

When all else fails, turn to Google. Yes, I know that it seems all roads lead to Google, but in most cases somebody else has had an issue similar to yours. Type in the exact error message your computer is throwing and you’ll most likely find some helpful solutions.

If you’re more experienced or just interested in getting into the nuts and bolts of software repair, check out Windows Event Logs for detailed descriptions of everything your computer is doing. The Microsoft knowledge Base contains articles that correspond with the event log IDs. MSConfig is a great way of tweaking your machine and killing resource intensive applications from firing on start-up. As a next-to-last resort, you might consider something as advanced as Ultimate Boot CD for Windows.

As the absolute last resort, you can reinstall. You do know where your restore media and back-ups are right? Maybe that’s another post. I’ll work on that while you start searching!

Filed under: Technology | Tagged: Live, Maintenance, PC, TroubleShooting