As a computer professional, I'm always ask to help out with a computer problem from friends and family. I do not mind but sometimes I wish I could show them simple things that they can do on their own. One of the biggest for me is cleaning your computer of junk. In the spring, we all do house cleaning and for computer spring cleaning should happen at least once a month. With all the time that we spent on the internet and download/upload. Now is the time to do a few simple things to your computer. Backup at least your system state files, email messages and my document folder. Then you will need to clean and defragment your hard drive to make it perform better. Finally you will need to use some type of identify and privacy system to protect all those purchases over the internet. I will show you how you can do this in three simple steps.

• Step 1 - Backup your data is very important first step. You have to make sure that you can recovery in case some disaster happens. I found a very good and easy system to do this at Comodo.com web site. They offer a free backup application that you can use for personal use to backup system files, email messages and my document folder. You can do other backups as well but this is a start.
  
• Step 2 - After you have successfully backup your important data, now you want to clean and defragment your hard drive. Cleaning will get ride of old temp files and other file types that take up space on your computer. You can do a disk cleanup which comes with Windows or you can download CCleaner and do the same time. If you want to use what I use, email me at techsupport@retlub.com with the subject line, I need a PC hard drive cleaner and I will send you the file. Then you can run defragmentation to compact and optimally order your hard drive giving you better performance. If you do not want to do this on your own, go to www.it-pitstop.com and sign up for 7 days of free no obligation service and one of the IT professionals will do the steps for you free.
• Step 3 - Now that you have completed step 1 and 2, you need to protect your internet transactions. Making sure that your identity and private credit card numbers are protected can save you a lot of work in the future. These days, you have to be your own police to protect your ID. Go to www.comodo.com and get their free for personal use iVault application. This application installs in minutes on your computer and once programmed can protect your ID online, credit card numbers as well as social security numbers. It even helps with banking transactions online as well.
  

Use these three simple steps along with updating your operating system on a weekly basis will help keep your computer running for years to come. In my next post, I will talk about firewall and anti-virus programs to protect you from internal and external threats to your computing. If you have any questions in the main time, please post comments.

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