Keeping your PC Healthy
Unlike buying a PC, keeping your PC healthy is a continuous task you have to do. Don't worry though, its not that hard (most of the time)! Doing a little spring cleaning, both for your software and hardware can do wonders to your PC, even claiming back the performance you use to have.Hardware
Hardware Monitoring
While this may seem so obvious, monitoring is one of the best way you could detect a problem on your PC. By monitoring your hardware, you can detect early symptoms of hardware failures, irregularities or below than average performance from your PC. You need to monitor these essential peripherals: processor, graphics card, hard drive and power supply. The reason is simple, because they feature moving parts - your processor, graphics card and power supply are cooled by fans while your hard drive uses a motor to spin the data platter. Non moving parts and peripherals such as memory, motherboard. network / LAN adapter, sound card usually can't be monitored. Make no mistake though, they can and eventually will 'wear out', but they often last for years without any problems.If you bought your PC in parts or have someone build it for you, chances are you have the included CD bundle. Besides drivers, manufacturers and vendors often bundle monitoring software for their product. Check the CD contents to be sure. If you're out of luck, you can use free, third party utilities. Software like Motherboard Monitor and SpeedFan can be used to monitor your PC hardware's health and alert you to any impending failure or problem. Unfortunately, Motherboard Monitor is not updated anymore. You can download SpeedFan directly from the developer's website at http://www.almico.com/speedfan.php
Processor and fans
You can quickly see these monitoring softwares display all kinds of information regarding your hardware. The most important ones are your processors' temperature and the ambient air temperature inside your PC's case. Now you can see in real time what they are without going into the BIOS menu. What's more important is that monitoring software can be setup to trigger an action such as displaying a warning or even forcing a shutdown if one of the monitored statistics went over a limit. This safeguard will keep your PC from permanent damage if your processor gets too hot.They also display information regarding your fans' rotation speed. You could monitor several fans such as the processors fan, the system fan or additional fan connected to the motherboard. Now remember, some fans can't be monitored. To be monitored, these fans must be connected to the motherboard and supports monitoring. Fans that has built-in monitoring usually comes with three wires, so if your fan only comes with two wires you're out of luck.
Power supply
Then there's the voltage rails. Monitoring software often also displays information regarding the voltage of each of your power supply voltage rails. This is an important feature since by monitoring your rails in Windows, you could see whether or not the rails fluctuate or goes too low or too high when under load. You can't do this in the BIOS screen, since your PC is idle. Remember, if your rails went more than 10 % of its supposed values (such as 3,2 or 3,4 volts for the 3.3 volt rail), this is a sign that your power supply is barely keeping up with the electrical demands of your PC. Bear in mind, that this is only a sign - some motherboards reports less than 11.9 or 12.1 volt on the 12 rails even when the real voltage is still 12 volts.Most hard drives available today comes with S.M.A.R.T. What this feature do is it will let you know how healthy your hard drive is. If your hard drive starts to fail, S.M.A.R.T will send an alert to your S.M.A.R.T aware software, so you have some time to backup your data before your hard drive fails completely. All motherboard can be configured to activate S.M.A.R.T so your monitoring software that's S.M.A.R.T aware can alert you when this happens. You could also monitor the hard drive's temperature, since a too hot hard drive tends to fail more quickly than a cool one. If your hard drive is too hot (above 40 or 50 degrees Celsius), you might consider cooling it with a low speed fan or using a hard drive enclosure that's equipped with one.
You can also configure these softwares to log the values per second while they run. This is handy if you want to troubleshoot your PC and see how it perform at idle and full load (such as playing a heavy game or application).
In most cases your motherboard will be correctly identified and these software will automatically configure themselves. For the ones that don't, you have to manually configure the software. With trial and error, you should be able to configure them. The most difficult part is selecting the hardware monitoring chip that your motherboard uses. Shuffle through the options until you see the monitor statistics change - this usually means that's the correct chip. You might have to adjust the values or bias so it will report the real value correctly.
Graphics cards
Since your graphics card is one of the hottest parts of your PC, it also comes with built in hardware monitoring. But unlike the other parts, you can't really control what happens or know exactly what's the temperature. In most cases, the graphics card driver will alert you if the temperature's too hot and slow down the graphics card so it won't get any hotter. When this happens, it's usually a good indication that there's a problem with your graphics card fan or heatsink. Another way to see whether or not there is something wrong with your graphics card is by playing games. If you see artifacts and errors, they might occur if your graphics card is too hot.Heat / Temperature
We now know that monitoring software reports temperature and this is important because we want to keep our components and parts cool. A hot peripheral will have a shorter lifespan than a cool one. If it gets too hot, it might even be permanently damaged. If your processor or ambient temperature gets too hot periodically, this usually means there's something wrong with either your heatsink, fans or airflow inside the case.We briefly touched this subject in the 'Building your PC' article. Most people use active air cooling to keep their processors and graphics card from getting too hot. That means the fan and heatsink must have constant supply of cool air so they may work effectively. Assuming you're using a case, the air inside your case will not be cooler than the air outside. So even if your using 12 inch low speed fans, it really won't help much if you're using a PC in a hot environment. Try using your PC where the air is cool. If your PC don't have any problems when the case is opened, but slowly overheats if it's closed, this usually means there's not enough airflow. The solution: use two fans to help air get in and out of the case and rearrange the cables inside your PC to keep them from hindering the airflow.
One of the most often asked question regarding PC and peripherals temperature is how hot is too hot? This is a difficult question to ask and requires quite a long answer. Any peripherals must have a certain operating condition to work without problems. They usually require room temperature to be around 25 to 30 degrees Celsius. So it's a good idea to try to keep your environment in that temperature. If you can't, then the peripherals will get hotter than normal but it might still be within tolerance. Most peripherals can operate without problems (normal) within 40 to 50 degrees Celsius. They still probably would work above 50 degrees Celsius, but their lifespan will be shorter. Some peripherals with thermal throttling such as processors will slow down and try to stop itself from getting any hotter. So if you're getting slow frame rates, your processors might be slowing down since its not cool enough. Remember that peripherals produce more heat when they're at full load, so when thinking temperature think full load and not idle temperature. How do you know what's the full load temperature of your peripherals? The answer is simple: by monitoring the temperature when you're playing heavy games and applications.
Electricity
Like any other electrical appliance, PC uses electricity, sometimes to a great degree. But the most important thing is that it needs good, clean, stable electricity. We've also touched this subject before: use a UPS with automatic voltage regulator to provide electrify to your PC and peripherals (such as monitor, printers and scanners). Then there is the power supply: remember that your power supply must be able to supply enough power to the other components. Getting a huge power supply with an output of 450 or 600 watts is not the answer. Hard drives, CD / DVD-ROM and some graphics card draws additional power from the 12 volt rail. Motherboards featuring ATX 12 v connectors also provides additional electricity to the processor by using the 12 volt rail, besides using the main 5 volt rail. Add-on cards and memory usually uses the 3.3 volt rail. So check the sustained watt output on each rail of the power supply. Again remember, if your rails went more than 10 % of its supposed values (such as 3,2 or 3,4 volts for the 3.3 volt rail), this is an indication that your power supply is barely keeping up with the electrical demands of your PC.Dust
After a while, dust will accumulate inside your case. Depending on how dirty (dust, cigarette smoke, other airborne agents) the environment is where you use your PC, you have to periodically clean the dust inside your case. Fans and heatsink are the places where dust gather the most. The printed circuit board (PCB) of your graphics card, motherboard and memory will likely be covered in a thin film of dust as well. Just like when building your PC, unplugged all electrical cables and disassemble your PC. Remember to take electrostatic discharge (ESD) precautions and very carefully clean the components and parts. Use a damp cloth for surfaces and a small brush for those hard to reach spots. Let all the parts and components dry for a while, just in case some moisture might still be on any of them. After this, reassemble them just like when you're building your PC.You might also want to use an air filter for the ventilation holes on your PC's case. Just remember that using an air filter does inhibit airflow in some way, so only use them with fans. You could also build your own home-brew filter using old stockings or any cloth that's thin enough, stopping the dust while still letting the air in.
Software
Cleaning Up Windows
Look at your system tray (the ones with icons on the lower left of your screen). Chances are you have more than three icons there, once you have unhid those hidden icons. That's probably too many. Each icons represent a single software running on the background. These programs consume your PC's resources, usually memory which your foreground applications needs most. Look at those icons and see what they are. Most of the time you don't need to run all of them. These are the ones you can do without: QuickTime, Task Scheduler, WinAMP Agent etc. If you're not connected to a network or the Internet, you can close ICQ, Yahoo Messenger, MSN or other instant messaging applications, not to mention any download manager and of course firewall or anti-virus software.
Now, getting them off your PC for now is easy but think: do you really need them to start every time you enter Windows? You could check and configure what programs are ran when you first boot up by running the System Configuration Utility. You could run by choosing 'Run' on the Start Menu and type 'msconfig' (without the quotes). Look for the last tab named 'Startup'. Here you could all those startup programs. Check off the software you don't need.
Updating drivers and Windows
There are two things you must do every month: updating drivers for your hardware (usually graphics card and motherboard drivers) and installing update patches for Windows from Microsoft (fixing bugs and security exploits). If you're on a broadband connection, you can automate Windows updates, but I don't recommend this. Just make a reminder on your calendar or personal information management (PIM) application or add it as a scheduled task in Windows. It's also a good idea to restart your PC once in a while, since even Windows XP can be bogged down by memory hungry applications.For graphics card drivers, you could either download the specific graphics card driver from the vendor's website or the reference graphics card driver from the manufacturers website. This usually means either ATI (www.ati.com) or NVIDIA (www.nvidia.com). If your graphics card doesn't use either one of those two, check the respective manufacturers' website.
Safe Guarding Windows
One of the most critical problems for users are viruses and worms. This is why we have those various anti viruses and firewall programs. That's said, installing them is often not enough. To really stop these attacks, you have to configure them properly. Most of the time, viruses and worms uses e-mail attachment, file downloads from the Internet of other PC or through a bug exploit of the operating system.
Anti virus
Software: A Necessary Evil
By securing e-mail attachments and file downloads, we
have effectively cut down the possibility of a virus or
worm infection. Configure your anti virus software to check
your POP3 / SMTP or IMAP e-mail you've downloaded for
viruses. They would examine your e-mail for viruses and
worms in the background while you're checking and sending
e-mail. Download managers usually also comes with support
for anti viruses programs, so configure them to work
together. That way any Internet downloads will be quickly
checked for viruses and worm after the download's complete.
You can also set your anti viruses program to check
folders, floppies or removable media for viruses and
programs. An alternative approach is to make a temporary
folder container for copying files and then running your
anti virus program to check that folder.
Most users configure their anti viruses program on the normal setting. Don't do this, since many times viruses and worms can escape detection. Choose the highest, safest setting possible. Since your anti virus program would only run when checking e-mail, downloads and temporary container folders, they won't hog your PC's resources all the time (such is in the case of watching folders, floppies or removable media and network folders).
Since new viruses and worms pop up almost daily, update your anti virus virus definition files at least weekly if you're on a broadband connection. All anti virus programs feature an update feature, which will connect to the official software vendor website to download any updates. If you don't have a broadband connection, you can download the virus definition file yourself from their website at your convenience (for example, every month).
Firewall:
Don't Announce Yourself to the World
While using a firewall does stop most security risks,
it can also hog your PC's resources. So be conservative: if
you're not connected to a network or the Internet, don't
turn on your firewall. Use them only when you're connected.
The built in firewall bundled with Service Pack 2 is
actually quite good and will stop most security risks. But
remember, even Microsoft recommends you to use an anti
virus software along with the firewall and update your
Windows periodically. Don't forget, even firewalls have
bugs and these bugs can be exploited - so every month check
whether or not there are updates to your firewall
software.
If you're sharing a broadband connection with other users, either with a network address translation (NAT) or proxy software, consider getting a router with a built-in firewall . Not only will you be able to relieve the burden of using the NAT and proxy software from your PC, but you also don't have to run any firewall programs. There is a downside: some router's firewall don't stop traffic from the inside. So you still have to use anti virus programs to check for any Trojans on every PCs. You can configure the firewall software on the router just like you configure your own firewall. Check the documentation or the manufacturers' website to see which router has a built in firewall and how to configure them.
Ad wares: The
Terrible Nuisance
Browser hijacks and ad wares is the next menace you need to be careful with. Unfortunately, while the latest Internet Explorer 6 is getting better, its not that good yet, particularly with ad wares. Try using alternative browsers such as Mozilla Firefox or Opera which offers more protection against browser hijacks. Since they're not fully integrated with the operating system, an attack would only target the browser or any data your browser stores. So, never store passwords, credit card numbers or other important personal information in your browsers. As for ad wares, use ad ware removal utilities such as Ad-Aware and periodically check your systems for ad wares. Check your system weekly if you're quite an avid browser or install lots of programs downloaded from the Internet.
Make backups and 'images'
Making backups and 'images' or snapshots of the files on your hard drives is one the task that is often overlooked by users. Nonetheless they are important and everyone should at least backup their data every 3 months. After all, when all else fails it's nice to know you still have a backup of your data and systems. Windows comes with its own backup utility, simply named 'Backup'. You could find it in the Start Menu under Programs, Accessories, System Tools. For those not familiar with backup procedures, just follow the wizard. With this tool, you can do backups of your own documents, other users' documents or even the whole Windows installation. After the backup process is completed, you will have a backup and a system recovery disk which you will use to restore the backup. You could also use the Windows XP installation CD to restore the backup.
Those wanting more control over the backup process can forgo the wizard. The Backup Utility software lets you customize more options such as file, folder or whole drive / partition selection and the type of backup you want to do. You can change the type of backup you want to use by clicking the menu item 'Tools' and choosing 'Options'. The default is normal, but you can choose incremental, differential, copy or daily backup. Normal backup stores everything and sets the files as already been backed up, while copy don't set the files. Differential and incremental backup only stores the files that have been created or changed since the last backup. Again, incremental backup sets the files as already been backed up while differential don't. Daily backup stores the files that have been modified after the day the last daily backup was made. Those who want to make a complete backup image of a folder or even a hard drive or partition should uncheck the excluded files list on the 'Exclude files' dialog.
A sound backup policy is related to how often does your files change. At least do one full backup just after you have installed Windows and other applications you need. Another example would be a full, normal backup every month and a incremental backup every week. You could automate these backups by scheduling them. Just remember that backup takes time (depending on how much data are backed up) and resources, so be sure you set them to run at a time you won't be using your PC. If you don't have a backup media / removable storage, you could opt to choose a second hard drive or partition to store the backup. A typical Windows XP installation is around 2.5 GBs, so make sure there's enough room for the backup.
After following these steps, not only will your PC be healthy and fast, but you won't lose any data if something does go wrong. And since most of these tasks can be automated, you can spend more time using your PC the way you want to.
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