Almost never think about computer maintenance until the PC stops working as expected and begins to have problems. When errors begin to appear and, above all, inevitable system slowdowns and program loading, it may already be too late to think about maintenance and you have to move on to the next phase, the most complicated one of correction and repair.
It is therefore important to know how to treat the computer, which is a bit like our car, if it is well maintained, lasts longer and guarantees better performance.
We have already seen in another article all that needs to be done, more or less daily, to maintain the computer and put in place Windows.
In this article we are going instead to find out what are the indispensable programs that can help us in this maintenance work, easy, free and very effective programs to keep your PC healthy and fast at all times, like and more than when it was new, trying to prevent errors and slowdowns.
Here are 5 essential programs for PC maintenance …
1) Security Check
The first maintenance rule of a PC is to keep it safe from malware, viruses and malicious software.
From the general guide to computer security we know that it is important to focus on three basic things: installing an antivirus, updating Windows and installed programs, using your computer with common sense and prudence.
In addition to this, however, it is also essential a program to scan anti-malware every so often, which removes any possible malicious intruder that has escaped the antivirus (and this often happens).
Malwarebytes is the program to be installed and used every month or two to make a quick check, detect and successfully remove every virus, worm, spyware and more. The free version only makes complete manual scans, which is more than enough for everyone.
From the point of view of security, I think it is also essential the ADWCleaner program, which is not an antimalware, but a tool to scan tracer programs with advertisements and sponsors, which are almost always not desired and were installed unwittingly.
2) Analysis of disk space
The disk is used by the PC always inconsiderately, even if the user does not want to.
The management of free disk space is very important for the performance of a computer, because the more files there are, the more time the system will take to read them and the slower the writing of new files.
Cleaning up the Download folder is already a good starting point, checking that we do not have duplicate photo folders is also very useful, then there are all those forgotten files, maybe automatically created by the PC, which are scattered throughout the system, difficult to detect.
WinDirStat is therefore an indispensable program to use, because it scans the disk and allows you to see how hard disk space is used by files and folders, so you can quickly find the largest ones to delete.
3) File Cleanup and Optimization
To clean up all the files, even small ones, created by the system and programs, which can increase problems over time, it is necessary to use CCleaner.
CCleaner is the best known of automatic programs to optimize the PC, free and simple, but very powerful, functional and above all safe and that does not create messes.
CCleaner is able to get rid of temporary files, to clear the browser cache, system logs and all that is superfluous and no longer need to be stored.
In addition, CCleaner performs this check both at the Windows system level and at the level of installed programs, freeing really large amounts of space if it is used every 2 or 3 months.
NOTE: In CCleaner there is also the function of cleaning the register, which is useless and it is better to avoid in modern systems.
4) Complete program removal
The uninstallation of programs in a Windows PC is linked to the efficiency of the program itself.
Some are then removed completely, while others leave many traces that go to grow the amount of obsolete files.
Maybe it is not essential, but it is still very useful to have a tool to uninstall programs such as the light and functional Geek Uninstaller, currently my favorite of this category or Revo Uninstaller, the most popular.
Geek Uninstaller is simple, when you want to uninstall an app, it scans the system by looking for all the related files that may have been left by the standard Windows uninstaller and removes them.
5) Hardware control
Knowing the exact specifications of what is inside the computer is really important, not only to install the right programs, but also to proceed with the possible replacement of pieces or to compare with a newer PC.
The Speccy program gives us all the information about CPU, RAM, graphics card, memory, motherboard, audio and all other internal parts of the computer.
In addition to Speccy, it is also very useful to install a program like Coretemp, for check the temperature and heat on the hardware components, especially the summer.