General PC Maintenance and Troubleshooting

1. General PC Maintenance and Troubleshooting By: Cain Fairbanks

2. Top Five PC Problems • 5. “The Blue Screen of Death” • 1. E-Mail (Sending/Receiving) • 2. Network Connectivity (User Logons) • 3. Issues With the “Green Screen” • 4. Printer Issues

3. Characteristics of Virus and Spyware Infection • Extremely Slow Processing • Inability to open programs • Internet Homepage gets changed • Constant redirection to unscrupulous websites • Phishing/Scamming emails sent to your inbox

4. Ways to keep your PC running smoothly • Reboot at least once a week • Run a virus scan and update once a week • Defragment your PC once a month • Run disk clean up once a month • Run spybot once at least once a week

5. How to Defrag your PC • Left click on Start • Choose Programs, Accessories, System Tools, and Disk Defragmenter • Choose Analyze (it will tell you if you have anything to defrag. or not) • If you do, choose Defragment

6. How to use disk Clean Up • Left click on Start • Choose Programs, Accessories, System Tools, and Disk Cleanup • Choose the drive you want to clean (C drive) • Let it scan • Check all the boxes • Click OK

7. How to use Spybot • Left click on Start • Choose Programs, Spybot: Search and Destroy • Search for Updates (found on left side) • Check boxes and download all updates • Choose Safer-networking #1 (it is fast) • Choose Search and Destroy and Check for Problems (found on left side) • Infections will appear in red • If you have infections, mark them (with a checkmark) and choose Fix Selected Problems

8. Websites of Interest • Anti-Virus • www.grisoft.com • Spybot Search and Destroy • www.safer-networking.org • Adaware SE • http://www.lavasoftusa.com/software/adaware/ • Free Online Virus Scan • Housecall.trendmicro.com