How to keep your PC Healthy

Your PC will age with time and slow down. Hardware failure, software glitches and virus attacks are inevitable. CHIP tells you what you need to do to keep your computer in top shape, and how to heal it should performance degrade.

Do you remember the day you got a new
computer? The PC booted quickly and
the familiar desktop soon appeared.
Applications loaded quickly and documents
opened in a jiffy. As you used the PC over the
months, you noticed a drop in performance. The
familiar Windows wait status was encountered
frequently, with the hour-glass icon appearing
regularly. Sometimes the system would throw
up annoying error messages, never mind that
most of those cryptic messages meant nothing
to you. Those who have been using a PC for two
years or more will experience this slowdown
syndrome. So what causes it? What can you do
to prevent it from happening in the future?
A number of things are responsible for
the slowdowns. The problem is likely to be
your software itself. Do you keep installing
applications, games, widgets/gadgets, addons
etc? If so, you are bound to experience
a slowdown especially when starting the
computer. The other culprit could be viruses
and other malware that come in mainly from the
Internet or the network.
We'd like to draw an analogy between your
computer and the human body. Babies need
to take their vaccines so that their bodies are
protected from diseases. Likewise, you need
to do routine preventive maintenance to ensure
that performance does not degrade. If you have
an accident, then you need first aid immediately.
We show you how to give your PC first aid if it
gets infected with a virus. We also need to take
our vitamins for strength and vitality. There are
certain "vitamins" that your PC needs so that its
performance is always to your satisfaction. This
article takes a problem-solution approach. We
also provide all the software tools required to fix
your PC, on the CHIP DVD