7 Computer Tips to Do EVERY Month!

how's it going guys i'm theojo and today i'm going to show you how you can keep your computer running in tip-top shape i've got seven monthly maintenance tips that you can do and then a couple tips that you can do probably like once a year less often than that all of these are really easy and really shouldn't cost you anything now before we jump in i want to quickly thank the sponsor of this video which is myself and actually my second brand new channel that i just talked about recently it's called actual school what they should have taught you just like the dave suggests it's going to be about useful videos about financial investing advice life pro tips and just skills in general so if that sounds like something you're interested in you can go check it out see what kind of videos i have up on there already there's a few already so check it out and be sure to subscribe if you're interested and of course that link will be right in the description all right so let's get into these tips and again these should not be taking long at all you can set aside like an hour once a month knock them all out very easy so first up we have uninstall any unused programs i don't know about you but every once in a while i'll go through and install a program use it once never use it again and then who knows it might be starting up or it might just be taking off space in the background so go through your list of apps in windows and just see if there's anything that you know you're not using anymore now if you're not sure what a program does at all you've never seen it before it might have been something that was pre-installed with the computer you bought so in that case it might be something that you should just leave alone if you're not a computer expert but if you do recognize what it is you know what it does and you know you don't need it then it's definitely easy to just uninstall it and then free up that space and that memory potentially and the good thing about this is the first time you do it you might clear out a whole bunch of different programs but then every time you do it once a month then it gets easier and easier because you might not have even installed any programs in that time and actually on windows 10 it's really easy because you can literally sort by install date and then you can just see if any of the programs you installed most recently you're still using and then just uninstall them from there but once you get to programs that you are still using you just let them go all right next up number two this is definitely an important one but you probably saw this coming it's check any startup programs that you don't want starting up with windows now hold on because even if you already knew this one you might not have realized there's actually at least three different ways a program can potentially start up with windows the first is the easiest to go through it's through the startup list on the task manager so what you can do is press ctrl shift escape that'll bring up the task manager you go into the startup tab and this will list a bunch of different programs that are automatically starting up with windows and then you can look through them and again if you know what a program does and you're like i don't want this starting up with windows you can just disable it and then you can always re-enable it if you want to later but just like with the uninstalling if you see something that is starting up you have no idea what it does it might be something that's slightly important so perhaps look up what the program is first and then make a decision but if you know you don't use it or you know that you only use it occasionally and you want to actually have to run it before it starts up and taking up resources then you can just disable it there and then it'll only run when you run it now next a program may also start up even if it's not in the actual startup list if it's in the startup programs folder now to get to this you can type in this path into the start menu just hit enter and it'll bring you to the location or you can just manually go to the path by going to c users app data roaming microsoft windows start menu programs startup and that's the full folder and here you'll probably find some shortcuts to programs and this is a folder where windows will actually run anything in this folder at startup so this is actually a good way if you want a certain program or thing to open up with windows on startup this is how you can do that you can add a shortcut to whatever that thing is in this folder so that's kind of like a bonus tip now if you're still seeing a program that's starting up with windows and you're not sure how the third place to check is to see if it's an actual service so you can do this again by going to the task manager there's a services tab or you can go into the start menu type in services.msc and this will bring up the services manager now don't worry if this looks really complicated if you have no idea what you're looking at here then it might just be better to not mess with it but basically a service is kind of like a startup program but it runs completely in the background it doesn't necessarily have any window that opens up or user interface it just purely runs in the background most of the time in the case of a service but sometimes there are services that may run a program and then it does open up so you can look through the service list here for the thing that is starting up and you know you don't want it to and then what you can do is change the startup type to manual and then that should make it so it'll only run the service if you actually run the program do be careful though in this window you might see a lot of stuff that you don't recognize and don't think that this means oh i don't use that i'm going to disable all these and run them manually because there might be some important stuff that other programs depend on so again be a little bit careful maybe only disable services or make them run manual if you specifically know exactly what it is and you know you don't want it running up at startup but if you're too worried about that maybe it's better to not touch these at all and actually there is a fourth place that could potentially be the source of a startup program and that is the task scheduler so you can find this by searching it in the start menu task scheduler and then look to see if there's any tasks in there that run at startup and then run that program and then you can either disable it or delete it or whatever but again be careful because there might be some important schedules in there all right so believe it or not that was all just number two so kind of a long tip but multiple parts so now we can move on to maintenance tip number three and that is to check for any windows updates and software updates now windows does automatically run updates but there are plenty of optional updates that may not be installed automatically unless you actually go and look for them like drivers for example so what you can do is go into the settings and then update and then look for any optional updates and then check for those and then maybe install that and this also applies to any other software you use regularly so for example your graphics cards when's the last time you update your graphics cards drivers maybe never you can usually just go on either nvidia or amd's website and then usually they have an installer you download and it automatically detects the card and stuff like that and it's usually a good idea to just make sure your graphics cards updates are on the latest version so everything stays running well and then again for any software you use regularly not a bad idea just kind of make sure that you have the latest version of it you might be missing out on features you didn't even know usually programs do have a section in the help drop down that says check for updates stuff like that all right moving on to the next tip which is to make sure your automatic backup is actually working now i'm assuming by this point if you've been listening to me for any amount of time that you do have some sort of automatic backup running and that is awesome that is essential but i would say about once a month just kind of go in and actually double check that it's actually backing up just kind of making sure so for example if you have an external drive just kind of click into it every once in a while and see okay yeah here are some recent files that i was using and did create and they're actually in the backup so it's just a little bit of peace of mind or alternatively if you're using a third-party software not like windows automatic backup you can usually go in and check and it'll tell you the last time an update was run so you can make sure that it does run it on schedule it's way better than kind of realizing when a hard drive crashes you go into the backup and realize there's some error that was causing it to not run for the past three months or so and then you're kind of screwed so it's just a good idea maybe once a month just kind of go in and check that it's actually doing its job the next tip is to quickly just vacuum off the fans of the computer just from the outside so a lot of times the fan intakes will have dust filters on them and then they can obviously build up some dust that they suck in without going into the computer and that can restrict airflow so just from the outside just when you're vacuuming your house or whatever just do a pass over the fans and just keep them nice i wouldn't recommend opening up the case and using the vacuum on there inside because that can cause a lot of static electricity so just stick to the outside vacuuming the fans from the outside and you should be fine all right up to number six which is to do a deep virus scan so i'm assuming you have some sort of antivirus whether it's a third party antivirus or the one that's just built into windows usually it does run on schedule sometimes even every day and a lot of times it runs in the background checking running programs and the automatic run will just do a kind of quick scan so it'll scan the most common files and folders that might be infected by a virus and again scan any running programs but not necessarily every file on your computer so it's a good idea at least once a month to either schedule or manually run a deep scan it might already be scheduled to do a deep scan every once in a while but if it doesn't you can just go in and manually run it and this should scan pretty much every file on your computer again this will take a long time so you can maybe just let it run overnight but it should give you a little bit more peace of mind and really the quick scans are good for doing daily things but again they take not so long and don't use up as much resources so if you really want to be careful a deep scan is good to do periodically now the final monthly tip is to just wipe down your monitor when's the last time you did that you might have just random dots all over it from either talking or maybe yelling at the computer while playing a game if you're anything like me you just kind of ignore it and you might only notice it when screen goes dark or something and then they show up but then when the screen gets bright again you immediately forget about it and it just gets worse and worse over time so i would say as part of your monthly maintenance just kind of go ahead and wipe it down get rid of all those things and it'll just look nicer now some tips for doing this i would not use windex because that could potentially damage any coatings especially if you're using a matte screen which is not glass i would definitely go and get some sort of specialized screen cleaner so this might even be a glasses cleaner you have for glasses which are designed to not affect any anti-reflective coatings that sort of thing that should be okay they also make on amazon and get like screen cleaners i'm sure they make them specifically something like that and then just wipe it down with a microfiber cloth don't use a paper towel because that'll just leave a bunch of different fibers that's no good use some microfiber cloth of some kind all right so those are the monthly tips now let's go into the tips that you should do not so often maybe once a year or so the first is to actually open up your computer case and dust it out now i would definitely not recommend using a vacuum on the inside of your computer that could potentially generate a lot of static charge vacuums tend to generate a lot of static charge what i would instead do is make sure the computer is off and you physically turn off the power supply switch and maybe still even keep it plugged in because that way the ground from the psu will still be in effect and it'll still ground all the components but make sure it's off and the actual physical power supply switches off and then just use a thing of canned air and blow all the dust off of it what i usually do is i do use a vacuum but i kind of keep it off to the side and then as the dust kind of flies up i have the vacuum i kind of use to vacuum up the dust out of the air not out of the computer directly if that makes sense you can also if you have a air purifier or something in your house you can put it next to the computer as you're dusting it off and that'll kind of suck it up and filter it all out if it's really bad if it's really dusty you've never done this before might even be better to just take it outside and dust it out outside and blow all the dust out so you're not getting it in your house and also obviously the frequency of how often you have to do this is going to depend on your house if you have a bunch of pets if it's on the rug and stuff you might be getting a lot more dust build up than someone like me who just has a hard floor or no pets or anything which doesn't really get a lot of build up in there that's gonna have to be your decision all right now the final tip you should do every once in a while probably at least once a year is to properly vacuum out your keyboard i'm not talking about just running the vacuum over the keys i'm specifically talking about removing all the keys and vacuuming out all that crap that you had in there you've probably never done this so you could probably imagine it's going to look disgusting now the way i would recommend doing this is first of all take a picture of the keyboard so you know the arrangement of the keys because when all of them are off it might not be as easy to put them all back especially if you have a bunch of media control keys that aren't in a standard location something like that you'll have a basic map of how to put them all back and i'd also recommend it's way easier if you use a keep cap removal tool you get these on amazon this is the one i have it was like seven bucks i'll put the link in the description and it makes it way easier to more properly remove the key off the keyboard without worrying about breaking it or snapping it or anything like that and you could use a pen and just prime off but the keycap removal tool makes it so much easier so much faster so if you follow these tips your computer should run a lot more smoothly over time and you won't have to do as much huge maintenance when things go wrong so be sure to subscribe and also click the bell i try to make new videos like this about twice a week if you guys want to keep watching the next video i'd recommend is where i talk about 10 really cool chrome extensions that you just got to see they're really cool and useful so i'll put that link right here you can click on thanks so much for watching guys and i'll see in the next video

Channel: ThioJoe

Views: 173,791

Keywords: technology, tech, computers, computer maintenance, computer tips, windows maintenance, make computer faster, faster computer, why is my computer slow, computer slowed down

Id: 6NIUN7ka0Wo

Length: 12min 34sec (754 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 31 2020