[Tutorial] Some useful PC tips, increase Performance, troubleshooting, etc

[ToraTora]

I used to work for computer store here in Brisbane, Australia since 2005.

Now working as IT consultant for one of the IT company in Queensland.

There are many people spending lot of money on fixing their old computers each year.

Computer is like your car, they need to be maintained properly for them to last longer.

 

Here are few tips to get your PC last longer.

Clean your computer/PC box once a month, clean all the dusk off the CPU Fan, case Fan, motherboard, PSU using a soft painting brush.

The amount of dust clogged inside your PC will get your hardware lifespan reduced greatly from overheating.

Make sure you do this when all the power to the PC is unplugged, or better off do it outside or in your backyard.

 

Get some good quality power board with a built in surge protectors.

Trust me, its a good investment. It will increase the lifespan of your PC hardware, and prevent you for some high cost in the future.

Even though you might be able to restore your surge-damaged PC by throwing money at it, you can't put a price on your data.

 

"Overclocking is a big No No"

Some PC enthusiast like to push their Hardware to the limit. You will get more juice out of your CPU, RAM or Graphic cards.

But since it's running at higher clock speed, it will also cause more heat on the hardware.

Better off buying the next one up rather than overclock your hardware.

 

Get a legal copy of Windows software, plus get some Free anti virus like AVG or Avast if you don't want to pay for one.

I have tried some dodgy copy of Windows bought from Ebay. The amount of issues I had over the time I use it is not worth trying in the first place.

You won't get all the security updates off windows website. And all the trojan, virus amount on my computers over the time is heartbreaking.

It makes my $3000 worth of PC performs like a pentium 3 computers. Streaming videos are so slows, Internet keep having a drop out, and other internet issues.

Ever since I upgraded my windows copy to the legal one, no more stressing on those issues.

 

Windows 7 vs Vista vs XP.

This is a difficult choice for some PC users that still using XP on their computers. Most of the new PC nowadays come with Win 7.

If you have a 5 years old PC, my advice is not worth upgrading on the Operating system. You will probably won't notice much improvement.

But if you do happen to have 2-3 Years old PC with at least Dual core CPU, 2GB of ram, and plenty of Hard disk space.

Upgrade to wins 7 is worth taking. You can Buy OEM version for half the retail price or you can buy Retail version in case you want to use it on your new computer in the future. Since I have upgraded my windows from XP pro to Win 7 32 bit editions, I have noticed a lot of improvement in term of reliability, speed, and overall performance.

Streaming on youtube has become more steady and faster. The security essential application came from Win 7 offer a lot of protection than my free anti virus software.

And the new looks of the desktop itself is making it worthwhile to spend $110 on the software.

 

Ram size

How much RAM is enough? This is very difficult to answer, it depend on how many application you normally open at once.

2-4GB of RAM is recommended since the price of RAM has becoming so cheap nowadays.

When your system keep crashing, there is a high chance that your RAM may be faulty.

There is a software called MEMTEST that can be used to test if your RAM is faulty or not.

 

Disk Defragmenter/Defrag your Harddisk

Defragging harddisk is the first thing IT technician would do when they see the customers computer complain about accessing files has become slower.

Disk Defragmenter is located in your Start>accessories>system tools.

The purpose is to optimize the time it takes to read and write files to/from the disk by minimizing head travel time and maximizing the transfer rate

 

System Restore

This is one of the best feature that windows offered. It has proved that it reduce our workload greatly as IT technicians.

When you notice your PC is acting funny, you can always try to perform system restore. It can restore your PC settings to the days when it was running okay.

This can greatly reduced the time to isolate the problem between software conflicts or Hardware faulty.

 

(will add more later, kinda tired of typing at the moment.

 

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ToraTora

[blueboy0510]

well done for taking the time to do this:001_Thank_You5: