The 5 Things You Must Learn to Avoid Taking Your Computer to a Technician

Do you take your computer too often to computer techs so that they can clean it up for you? Well, if you do then you should know that most times you can fix the problems yourself.

In this article I am going to walk you through the steps that you need to take before taking your computer to a tech who will surely charge you money that would be better spent otherwise. Some of these processes might take a little learning and patience on your side, but go ahead and learn how to do it. What this is called is a computer tune-up. You should be doing the following things at least once a month to ensure that you computer runs smoothly.

- Disk Cleanup
You can clean your C:// drive by going to Start, My Computer, and then right clicking on your C:// drive there and choosing Properties. Once there, you should write down how much space you're using and how much you're not, then click on the Disk Cleanup button that shows up there. Once you click it a small window will come up and you need to wait for it to finish; it's checking to see how much space you will be able to clear up. Once it's done, you will have a screen with check boxes on your desktop; what you need to do is click on the things that you would like to clean up. Make sure to read the descriptions carefully to avoid deleted something you need.

- Browser Cleanup
If you're using Internet Explorer, any version, what you want to do is open up a browser, and look for the Tools pull down menu. Once you've opened up the tools menu, look for Internet Options and click on it. This will bring up a window, and what you need to do is look for Browsing History under the General tab and click on Delete. Hitting delete will ensure that you get rid of all temporary files, browsing history, cookies, saved passwords, and web form information. If you would like to adjust what your IE saves, you can hit Settings and change around some of that stuff there.

- Desktop Cleanup
Doing a desktop cleanup is something you should do if at one point you find yourself having your desktop too cluttered. What you'll do is right click on any part of your screen and chose Properties. Then you will need to go to the Desktop tab and click on "Customize Desktop; this will bring up another window. Finally what you want to do is Clean Desktop Now; this will move any unused desktop items to a single folder. You can also cleanup the desktop by checking and un-checking desktop icons that you want or may not want to show up anymore. Once you're done, make sure to click Ok to close all of the windows.

- Run Antivirus/Spyware Cleanup
The way that you run an antivirus/spyware cleanup will vary depending on what brand of cleanup software you use. Usually though you can go to Start, All Programs, and look for your software there. Once your software has open, you should look for the place where it allows you to search your computer for infections. This isn't hard to do, what you have to make sure to do is, run the longest test they offer; make sure to get everything checked. Sometimes that can take hours, but it's worth it. If you're looking for some free antivirus/spyware program, check out www.spywareterminator.com; this one is amazing!

- Delete Unused/Duplicate Files
This is something that you will need to do on your Desktop and inside of your MyDocuments folder manually. To start you should open up one folder and check to see what you don't use anymore and delete it; especially if you have a copy of it on your All Programs menu; there's no need for a lot of shortcuts. Then you can head on over to your MyDocuments folder and open up everything to see what's junk and what's not. Don't hold on to unused files or duplicate files just because you are too lazy to check out what they are. Having unused and duplicate files only slows your computer down.