How to keep your Canada computer operating at top speed

To keep your Canada computer running at peak performance you can easily perform basic maintenance yourself. Your laptop or notebook, like mine, probably slows down or does some funny little things you do not expect on occasion. There can be any number of reasons for this.

Over the years, I have learned a few simple tricks that allow me, to keep my laptop in top working order. I use a Dell Canada laptop exclusively now which is great when I travel. The old desktop is a relic of the past. My operating system is Windows XP from Microsoft.

Your laptop or notebook computer, like your car, needs a little routine maintenance once in a while. As you search the Internet, write documents, store pictures or play games the internal workings get a little messy. Files get misplaced, memory fills up, which causes slow downs or strange things to happen. I am a heavy internet user so I do the following every week. You probably will not need to do it as often as I do.

Click on the start button down in the left hand corner of the screen. A box will appear. Let your cursor hover over the words “all programs” and a second box will appear. Somewhere in that box will be the word “accessories”. Move your cursor and hover over that word until another smaller box appears. Now hover over the words “system tools”. We are almost there. It is a lot simpler than it sounds.

The next little box contains the two things you want to do the first of which is “Disk Cleanup”. The second, which I will get to later, is a scary sounding thing called “Disk Defragmenter”.

Click on “Disc Cleanup” and up will pop a box asking which drive you wish to clean up. The default is drive C. That is what you want to clean up. Click on OK wait a short while and another box showing the unnecessary junk files, that cause slow downs, will appear. Make sure there is a little check mark in each check box then click on OK. The usual annoying little “are you sure” box will then appear. Click yes to erase the garbage that has accumulated in your computer.

The next thing you should do is a "Defrag". Imagine a filing cabinet that contains files that are misfiled. Then imagine that someone goes through all of the files and puts them all back where they belong. This is essentially, what a defrag operation achieves. You cannot harm your machine with this operation.

Here is what you do. Click on the start button and make your way to “System Tools again and click on the “Disk Defragmenter” button. Wait a few seconds and the defragment operation will appear on your screen. Click on the (C:) under volume and then click on “analyze". After analyzing the drive, it will tell you if you need to defrag the drive (volume). If it tells you there is a need to defrag, click on the defragment button. If there have been a few funny happenings on your computer this operation will often clear them up.

Restarting your computer after performing these maintenance tips is a good idea. This allows your operating system to self-correct problems it may have been having caused by the errors you have eliminated.

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