Previously I have written my suggestions on things to do every day: http://www.theweeklygeek.com/2009/08/31/pc-things-to-do-everyday/

Things to do every week: http://www.theweeklygeek.com/2009/09/01/pc-things-to-do-every-week/

My suggestions on what to do monthly: http://www.theweeklygeek.com/2009/09/03/pc-things-to-do-every-month/

Here is my list of things to do yearly. Physically clean the computer, with the system off and unplugged clean the outside of the case, the monitor and then remove the side of the case and dust the inside.

I used our normal household cleaner on the case and monitors bezel. I have LCD cleaner for the monitors screens however in the past I have sprayed eye glass cleaner on an eye glass cloth and then wiped the monitors.

As for the inside of the case, I take them outside and use canned air. Some people use small compressors. I don’t like them for a couple of reasons. First they can accumulate moisture and then spray that inside your computer, second they have a lot more pressure than canned air and can dislodge wires and devices like RAM or even processors, not something I want to not see and then spend extra time diagnosing. Make sure that the CPU and case fans as well as inside the power supply are well cleaned, the fans are where most of the dust builds up.

Enough about cleaning, the next thing I recommend is running full hardware checks. I know you have run your cleanup and defragmentation but that does not check for errors on the drive or in RAM. The major hard drive manufacturers have software that will scan your hard drive for errors.

Western Digital hard drive software: http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?lang=en#

Seagate’s SeaTools: http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/support/downloads/seatools

Fujitsus diagnostic tools: http://www.fujitsu.com/us/services/computing/storage/hdd/support/utilities.html

Microsoft (http://oca.microsoft.com/en/windiag.asp) and others have memory testing programs (I like Memtest http://www.memtest.org) that will check for issues with your RAM modules.

Of course many motherboard manufacturers have system tools for their boards. If all else fails, there are several Live CD versions of Linux that have generic tools that can be used. Knoppix is one such CD and is located here http://www.knopper.net/knoppix/index-en.html.

That is all I can think of at this time, if you have an idea or tip you would like to share feel free to e-mail us, until we meet again, have a virus free week!

Update software programs – check for updates on all programs, even those you “rarly” use. Adobe, Pinnacle, your GPS software. Bad guys use “holes” in these programs to get into and mess up your computer and life.

Check for hardware driver updates – Your video card may work better, your Network may run faster and again, there have been hackers that used holes in these programs to infest your computer.

Remove old unused programs – for the same reason as above, if you dont use it or know how it got there, like the 8 toolbars in your browser, remove the programs.

Run Disk Clean or if you have it another temporary file cleanup program – old files clog the hard drive and do cause issues, get rid of them. There are a couple of detailed articles on this site.

Run Disk Defrag or again if you have a 3rd party defrag program use it – this organizes your files and programs in a logical order for the operating system, allowing faster access. Again, there are articles on this site with step by step instructions.

Until we meet again, have a virus free week!

There are two correct ways to remove old programs.

The first is through the “Programs” list on your computer. To do this go to the “Start” button in the lower left of you display and then click on “Programs” or “All Programs”. Look for the name of the program you want to remove.

Click one time on it. If a new menu appears follow it out and look for an “Uninstall XYZ” where XYZ is the program name. If this is available, click one time on it and follow the necessary instructions provided by the Wizard (the step by step screens that appear). You may be required to reboot after removing a program.

If there is not an “Uninstall” feature available you will need to go to the “Control Panel”. To do this go to “Start | Settings | Control Panel” or in Windows XP go to “Start | Control Panel”.

Select the “Add or Remove Programs” icon by double-clicking on it.

The programs will be listed in alphabetical order.

Simply scroll down to the ones you no longer use, click one time on the program name and then select “Change/Remove” in XP or “Add/Remove” in other versions of Windows, once again simply follow the step by step Wizard to clean up the program.

Occasionally, after the Wizard has completed you will have a message appear that states something to the effect “Not all of this program could be cleaned up, press OK to continue”, do not worry about this, select “OK” and forget it for now.

You probably will have several programs to remove so go ahead. If you do not recognize the name of a program do not delete it yet. Connect to the internet as usual and go to your favorite search engine (mine is www.google.com) and search for the name of that program, you might find out that it is something related to your printer, scanner or a program that you do use after all.

One final thing, if you have Adobe Acrobat Reader listed under several versions, you should uninstall the highest numbered version first then the lower versions. After uninstalling all versions, then reinstall the latest version, which is currently 8 for XP, 7 for Windows 2000 and 6 for Windows 98/ME.

Once you have completed the removal of all programs, empty your recycle bin and then run the disk defragmentation program.

Well folks we have run out of time for this weeks fun filled edition of “The Weekly Geek”. Until we meet again, have a virus free week!

If you have Windows 2000 or NT you cannot set up Scandisk to run automatically without buying separate, non Microsoft software.

To run Scandisk manually, double-click on “My Computer”, then right click on the hard drive you want to scan, choose “Properties” and from the new list select “Tools”.

Finally under “Error Checking” click on the “Check Now” button.

When “Check disk…” appears, put a checkmark in box boxes, select the “Start” button. You will be advised that the scan will only work upon the next boot up.

To run immediately, close all programs and restart your computer (Start | Shutdown | Restart) or wait until you shutdown and later restart the computer as usual.

To automatically have Scandisk run in XP the task is nowhere as simple as in Window 9x. This is because the new version of scandisk checks the hard drive(s) before the system boots completely (just like in NT and 2000). This allows a more thorough check of the drive. Being the adventurous types we shall forge ahead and go bravely into the world of the self absorbed computer geek. Here you will find those impressive moves from “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” are just a slight of hand or keyboard in our case.

To begin, open Windows Notepad by clicking on the “Start” button and then on “Run”. Next, type in “notepad” without the quotes. This opens Notepad.

In notepad type in “echo y|chkdsk c: /f /x pause” no, this is not a misspelling. We are having the display show (echo) a check disk of drive C which automatically fixes (/f) any hard drive errors and locks the drive (/x) to keep anything from stopping the check disk, by “pausing” we are allowed to view any errors.

Now on the Notepad menu bar select “File” and then “Save As”. In the “Save In” box navigate to “C:\Windows\System32”.

Under the “File Name” box type in (and this time include the quote marks to prevent the file from being saved as a text file) “scandisk.bat” and then click on the “Save” button.

To schedule this in XP you must have a password that you use when you log on when first turning the computer on.

Now to schedule the file to run in XP go to “Start | Control Panel |Performance and maintenance | Scheduled Tasks”

Double-click “Add Scheduled Task” then “Next”

Select the “Browse” button and navigate by double-clicking in the large box on “C:” then “Windows” then “System32” and finally click one time on “Scandisk.bat” (remember these are in alphabetical order).

Scandisk should appear in the “File Name:” box. Select “Open”, here you can select how often you want to run the program. Select “Monthly” and then select the “Next” button again.

This screen allows you to choose when you want to run the program, at the top you can enter the time, for our purposes let us enter “9:00 AM” by clicking on the numerals in the box and changing them. Below the time you get to select either the numerical day of the month next to “Day” or the day of the week and week of the month next to the “The” boxes.

We will choose the “The” box by clicking one time in the white circle next to it.

The next two menus have drop down arrows, in the first box we will select “first” and the second box “Monday”.

Below this are the months of the year, make sure there is a checkmark in the box next to every month.

What we have done to this point is schedule the Scan Disk to run on the first Monday of the month, every month.

Select the “Next” button to continue. Here you will need to enter your password that you log on to XP with. The screen should be the last screen and it will let you know that you have “successfully scheduled the following task”. Simply click the “Finish” button and you are complete.

Well that’s it for scheduling a disk scan in XP and running a regular scan in NT or 2000.

Until we meet again, have a virus free week!

As a brief overview, you need to clean your computer and organize its files and programs to speed up the system and organize the clutter that occurs. Think of it as your filing cabinet. Every now and then you need to empty last years folders into a separate area, move your bank statements into a monthly order and throw out papers and documents that are no longer relevant.

The first step in this process is to run a “Scan Disk”. This will ensure that your hard drive is not defective and any defects are blocked off.
Next you need to clean up any unneeded files (Disk Cleanup).
Finally you need to organize what is left in a logical order (Defragmentation).
I would suggest setting up each of these programs to run once a month and to have them run on a different day. For example run Scan Disk on the first Monday of the month, the Disk Cleanup on the second Monday of the month and then Defragment on the third Monday of the month, or you could run Scan Disk on Monday, Disk Cleanup on Tuesday and Defragment on Wednesday.

This week we will run a scandisk. Once again if you have Windows NT you do not have this option available but every other version since Windows 95 does.
If you have Windows 95, on the desktop (the screen you see when you first turn on the computer and it finishes loading) double-click on “My Computer” and then double-click on “Scheduled Tasks” and then double-click on “Add Scheduled Task”.

If you have Windows 98 or ME you need to go to the desktop, then in the lower left of the screen click one time on “Start” then click one time on “Programs” that appears in the list and to the right of Programs click one time on “Accessories” and then “System Tools” and finally “Scheduled Tasks”.

For any of the above versions of Windows, you should now be in the Scheduled Tasks screen. There will be an icon labeled “Add Scheduled Task” double-click on it.

A set of pop up windows will walk you through the process. At the first window simple click one time on the “Next” button.

Next a screen with lots of choices will appear, on the mid-left is a scroll bar, use it to scroll down to “Scan Disk” (the list is in alphabetical order so it will be a ways down there). Click one time on “Scan disk” to highlight it and then click on the “Next” button.

Here you can select how often you want to run the program. Select “Monthly” and then select the “Next” button again.

This screen allows you to choose when you want to run the program, at the top you can enter the time, for our purposes let us enter “9:00 AM” by clicking on the numerals in the box and changing them. Below the time you get to select either the numerical day of the month next to “Day” or the day of the week and week of the month next to the “The” boxes.

We will choose the “The” box by clicking one time in the white circle next to it. The next two menus have drop down arrows, in the first box we will select “first” and the second box “Monday”. Below this are the months of the year, make sure there is a checkmark in the box next to every month.

What we have done to this point is schedule the Scan Disk to run on the first Monday of the month, every month.

Select the “Next” button to continue. The screen should be the last screen and it will let you know that you have “successfully scheduled the following task”. Simply click the “Finish” button and you are complete.

Until we meet again, stay tuned to this same bat channel at the same bat time for further exciting adventures of The Weekly Geek.