The Basics what you need to know how to look after and maintain your computer.
(all scaled down pictures can be clicked on to zoom)

The basics are:
Start-up & Recovery
Scanning and defragging your computer
Antivirus firewalls and anti-Spyware resources

Intro:
Throughout this page I will be using expressions like right click double click and press this. So here is what I mean

[Keystroke]: I will put keystrokes in [ ] to make it less confusing e.g. [ctrl] press the ctrl key, [alt],[f],[p] alt then F then P, or [ctrl]+[alt]+[del] ctrl alt delete.
Right-click: Press the RIGHT button on your mouse
Double-Click: Double Click the LEFT mouse button (i.e. Press it twice as fast as you can)

Also I am using though this page windows XP, some of this will work on previous versions of Windows NT (inc 2000) but most home users are with XP unless their computer is over 5yrs old.

1. Start-up and recovery
When you installed something or messed about with your computer sometimes it does go wrong. It happens to the best of us believe me it does, normally you can just uninstall the program normally but other times you might get the blue screen, known in the geek circles as the blue screen of death or BSOD for short, can be annoying normally happens when a bit of software doesn’t agree with your computer or can be a sign of something worse like failing hardware. Something like this one below.

Well if you can’t boot up windows normally esp. like a bad upgrade you can boot into something called safe mode, it’s a special boot of windows that loads just the bare minimum. It will not load your sound, video drivers (it will be in 640x480x16) etc. to get into safe mode wait until the bios screen is loaded (that’s the memory check etc at the very start) press [F8] and you should get this screen

Select Safe mode and press enter twice and wait for it to load. Because the screen resolution is so low (640x480) the welcome screen might not show your username if that is the case press [ctrl]+[alt]+[del] and put your name and password (if acceptable) in and press enter what will you see is the “2000 style” log in screen.

You will now see a dialogue box telling you about what safe mode is. Click yes to go into windows under safe mode as everything is minimal you can delete or uninstall most programs that was “locked” by the system. Just remember you can not get online under safe mode because no extra drivers are loaded there are exceptions but we won’t go into that.

If you chose no it will load a program known as system restore which is a program which lets you “roll back” to a previous state. It is very easy to use just follow it screen by screen.

Be care not to roll back too far because it will reset most settings even like your display settings and user settings it will revert back to the settings it was for that date. If you feel you made a mistake with the roll back system restore is undoable and you can do that after it’s rebooted or again by running system restore again.

2. Scanning and defragging your computer
This is the simplest thing to do but it’s the most neglected basic of computing. The best time to do this with your computer is overnight or when you use you computer the least because it can take time and slow down your computer. To perform these tasks go into “My computer” and right click on the hard drive you want to scan and click properties then tools and you will see this.

*note backup is on XP pro only

The chkdsk utility is for checking your disk(s) for errors or anything that causes your computer to run a bit slow or stop responding etc.
To run the check-disk utility click on the tool and check all the boxes like so

If you get a dialogue box like this click yes and restart the computer normally

 

After your computer boots up you will get a blue screen telling you that you scheduled a disk check. You can quit if you change your mind within 10 seconds if not you pretty much stuck with it until the end

The disk check goes though 5 stages and it will take a while to do depending on the size of your hard drive it can take a few minutes to a few hours so it’s a good idea to run it overnight.

The Disk defragmenter utility is to “tidy” up your computer so it will run a bit more faster, its kind of when your room or desk is messy it takes that little longer to find stuff it is like that with your hard drive when its all tidied up its easier to and quicker to find and load. You don’t always have to run the program you can analyse the disk to see if it is worth defragmenting and it will tell you in a dialogue box.

You will see two bars the top one is “before” and the bottom one will be “after” it is in 3 colours red is fragmented (untidy) blue defragmented (tidy) and green for unmovable system files. The more blue your disk the more tidy it is. When its all done you will see a box like that

The best thing to do is run both check disk and defrag at least once a month to keep your computer ticking over

3. Antivirus firewalls and anti-Spyware resources
Antivirus: AVG Antivirus ,Avast.
Firewall: Zone Alarm, Comodo,
Anti-Spyware: Adaware, Spybot.