Maintenance planning is simply a methodology.
incorporates “Preventative” rather than “Reactive” process to maintain your computer’s
health.
Implementing a proper plan allows one to recover from accidental file deletion, corrupt
hardware or “Catastrophic Failure”. To be clear and precise, a complete system meltdown
does not mean you simply recover from the original Media. It may be likely that you
have to re-register your OS version and other software products. In many cases, users
have upgraded their system over some period of time and unknown to them, they can
only do this a finite number of times within a fixed time period. So you may find
yourself in a situation whereby you cannot re-register without paying additional
fees or having significant problems trying to do so.
Collectively, we sit down and look at the following information:
- What type of work do you use your system for. For example, Internet Browsing, Email,
Office Document usage, Video/Audio editing and the like,
- What is the frequency of each type of work? If you use the system 60% of the time
to browse the Internet, then this suggests a different maintenance plan than if you
use it for the same amount of time for document management and usage,
- Do you use a backup plan or procedure? I can safely say that about 85% of my customers
use to backup about 5% of the time. In fact, it wasn’t even a true backup plan. Users
would simply copy the files to USB sticks, Floppies of RW CD/DVD media. That’s not
backup, that’s copying,
- Do multiple people use the system? This is an important issue as different people
want different things from the system. For example, a teenager is more likely to
be using sites such as Facebook, Myspace and the like, while adults may be more interested
in using News and Blog Sites. This effects such things as Disk Cache, Browser settings
and other related details,
- Is your “Safety Software Current”? In other words, is your Antivirus and Malware
software current? Follow this link for details and afurther discussion regarding
Anti-Viral and Malware issues,
- Is your system physically clean? By this I mean, do you clean your system like you’d
clean your house? Believe it not, computer systems are a great “Dust Bunny Havens”!
I can’t tell you how many systems I’ve opened and found dust and other contaminates
in the case. Dust is a “GREAT” conductor of electricity, this of course is not good
and causes about 65% of all system crashes,
- How about “Cooling”? I’ll bet your system is running a little hotter than it should
because of inadequate fans. In fact, I just recently performed some remedial maintenance
on a customer system that was so dirty inside, the fan was actually clogged from
the dust and simply was not working. This; fortunately for the customer caused only
a minor failure due to heat. It was an easy remedy. Left unchecked and the CPU could
have fried, or the ram or even worse - the Hard Disk,
- Are your hardware drivers current? Many times, an older driver may cause intermittent
problems with a system. The problems my appear or seem to be caused by something
totally unrelated. Often times, I’ve talked to users that have upgraded/replaced
their fans or cables or any number of things (mainly because their buddy said so).
The problem(s) seem to be gone, but after some period of time, they resurface,
- Now one of the Big Ones! Do you (or others) use the system for File Sharing? If so,
then you are likely using something like Limewire, Bearshare or the like. These guys
ARE NOT YOUR FRIENDS! I do not suggest that they are nasty. What I suggest is that
these programs install agents that not only allow you to share files, but more than
like share ALL OF YOUR files. Anytime you are involved in a “Community Sharing Environment”
you run the risk of not only effecting your system performance, but you are most
likely compromising the security and safety of your system. BE CAREFUL HERE...
- What else? Well to be perfectly honest, the list is endless. Suffice it to say, “Proactive
Defence” is far more preferable than “Reactive Recovery”. Please feel free to contact
me for a more detailed discussion or let me come in and use my “Quick Evaluation
System” to determine a Maintenance Plan.