The Ecommerce Workshop

Keeping your computer safe from viruses, hackers and other internet issues is fast becoming one of the biggest drains on a PC users time. Here we offer a selection of market leading software products from McAfee UK. McAfee offers virus protection, internet security software, personal computer updates, hacker protection and anti-virus downloads.

We all have different levels of skills when it comes to computers and computer maintenance. If you are relatively new to computers and the internet, one of the key factors you need to know is how to keep your computer perfectly tuned and performing well. Like a car if your computer is not kept tuned, it will break down on you and your experience on the internet can become a chore rather than a joy.

In our computer housekeeping section, we will aim to assist you in keeping your PC in tip top shape, no matter what your skill levels. In this topic we want to talk about a basic maintenance routine on your computer known as defragmenting. For your reference, this is based on a machine using Windows XP Pro but the process will work pretty much the same with Vista…

You may wonder why we have to defragment. It goes to say that if we need to defragment, that means your hard drive is fragmenting. That is the data that is written to it. Every time you run a program files are taken from your hard drive and loaded into memory than placed back on your hard drive. However the computer does not put it back where it found the file in the first place. It finds the first available space and places it there. After a while you have files from programs scattered all over the hard drive. This means that your computer has to search longer for each file it needs to run the program you are using. If your computer fragments to much your hard drive can lock up. This is not good at all.

When you defragment you computer, Windows programs comes with a program that when run takes these files and places it back where the file belongs with the rest of the program it belongs to. Now your hard drive is up and running like it should baring any other problems.

Before you can defragment you must close all your programs accept for your sound icon, sys tray, and explore. To do this press CONTROL > ALT> DELETE, and highlight each item and click end task. If another window pops up, click on end task. Repeat this procedure until you have cleared all of the items accept Sys tray, and explorer. NOTE: these two functions must not be removed. If you do you will have to reboot and start from scratch.

After closing all the extra programs then you go to START > PROGRAMS > ACCESSORIES >SYSTEM TOOLS> DISC CLEAN UP. Once the disk clean up window comes up follow the instructions. After a successful clear out, you are now ready to defragment your hard drive.

To defragment your hard drive, click on START > PROGRAMS > ACCESSORIES > SYSTEM TOOLS > DISK DEFRAGMENTER. When the window comes up choose your hard drive as the disk to defragment. That is usually Drive C: physical drive. Then click ok. Once you have been notified by your computer that the defragmentation of your hard drive is complete, exit the Disk Defragmenter, and then reboot. If you have no other problems on your computer, this will bring you computer up to speed…

In the next topic, we will help you give your desktop or laptop a timely boost that will remove the need to spend on a new machine!!!