All computers need maintenance on a regular basis. Think of your car, you must change the oil and get a tune up every now and then. If you follow the advice below your computer will stay running for much longer.

Backup, Backup, Backup Back-up your important files on a regular basis. You do not need to backup the system or program files (you do have the original disks, right). The basic rule of thumb is to back up at the point where you would rather not redo the work. In other words if you type a letter to your mom and lose it might be easier to retype it than save it. If however you have a client list that your business depends on then you should have at least one backup copy of it. Several copies with one off- site would be ideal. You can use any media to backup from diskettes to CDRoms. What you use is less important than the fact that you do back up. Take a look at your daily work on the computer and backup everything that you use, some examples are:

· Word and excel files

· Email address

· Internet passwords

· Accounting data

Check hard disk for errors Run Scandisk on your hard drive. Scandisk will check your computer for errors and attempt to fix them. Once a month should be enough although a heavy user might want to do it more often Defragment hard drives Run Defrag on your hard drives. As time goes on your files get spread over the drive and your computer must retrieve them from several different area’s. A defrag program gathers all the pieces together which reduces disk access and is much more efficient.

Use a Anti virus program You will get a computer virus sooner or later so use an up to date anti virus program. There are several viruses now that attach to email so make sure your virus program will scan your email messages.

If all else fails Eventually your computer will fail to start or get so slow that you cannot work with it any longer. This is where doing a regular backup is so important. All Windows based computer systems will need to be formatted and reinstalled every so often. I recommend doing this every year to keep your computer running properly. Scanning the disk and running Defrag are temporary measures, you will need to redo the whole computer down to the metal. Its not as hard as it sounds, the first time might take you several hours but after you gain experience you should be able to be back up and running in one hour or so. Here are the basic steps, you might want to get a tech in to help you.

· Backup files

· Format

· Install OS (like windows)

· Install Applications (like MS Office)

· Connect to the Internet (if needed)

All done!

These few steps will keep you up and running with fewer problems.

Good luck and happy computing. You can find this article on my website at http://sds.jumpcomputers.com/