Reduce your hassle

To make your computer run faster and more reliably, protect you from outside creeps, and make it easy to find your documents and pictures, and smooth the way should you ever crash, consider incorporating cleaning, customizing, and preparing for disaster into your computer habits.  

1.Clean
Windows and applications are messy, and they don’t always pick up after themselves. This causes disorganization on a larger scale, and pretty soon programs are tripping over each other and crashing. Weekly tidying up can keep you from being bogged down every day. With a mess, of course, the first clean-up can be horrendous, but it will be worth it in overall computer time and personal hassle saved to keep it clean. CCleaner by Piriform is an excellent free (but please contribute to them if you find you love it)program for weekly or deep cleaning.

2. Customize
Organizing your files in a bold way that works for you and setting your software preferences for your own working style will make your computer easier to use and safer from predators. Create a file structure that works for you, and right-click on the file name to re-name your digital photos from "10000234G" or whatever to "Maddie at the beach 2006."

3. Prevent future problems
Now that your machine is clean and customized, updates,spyware, anti-virus software, and firewalls are crucial. Two other things will set you free if you ever crash – a boot disk (short for re-boot, or get me back to original), and the ever-popular backup.

The boot disk is to replace Windows in case of a bad crash. The quickest, least expensive way back to full functioning after a computer crash is to have a Boot Disk prepared ahead of time.

The backups are for your documents, data, music, photos, and video. Back-up of important files can be scheduled and automated. Recovering lost data is very, very expensive and irritating. Can I get a witness?