Fortifying your Defenses: Computer Maintenance

It's boring. It's repetitive. It saves you time and heartache.

Well, maybe not heartache, but it does save you strife and taking a sledge hammer to your computers.


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Regular monthly updates, scans and maintenance will keep your computers running quickly and efficiently.

Windows updates are important. Windows OS are the most widely used computers so they are most prone to hackers. The updates fix security threats and keep your computer strong. If an update doesn't go through the first time. Don't panic. Try again next time. If no updates go through for month, contact your IT support.

Anti-virus
Please, please, please have an anti-virus. Avast!, Kaspersky, BitDefender are all good ones. Here is PC magazine's pick for top 2017 Anti-Viruses.
Your anti-virus will run scans on a schedule. When running updates its a good idea to update your anti-virus and scan your computer at this time as well.

Malware protections
I use SuperAntiSpyware, Spybot Search & Destroy and Malwarebytes.
Here are some others both free and paid-for versions.

Browsers
Clean up your browsers. Remove the browser history, the saved passwords, the autofill data. I like to use CCleaner. It cleans out temporary folders from downloads, Caches, history and it can clean up my registry files too.

Run updates on Adobe Flashplayer and Java. Your browsers will be happy. They are always prompting for updates. Note: Java is going away. Chrome has already stopped supporting it. But since Chrome is a RAM hog, you may use other browsers. They still want Java. And I don't mean the coffee.

Do these simple tasks once a month and your computer will thank you for it!