STUDY GUIDE: Built-In Maintenance Program Tools
Built-in programs within the Windows operating system that help improve computer
performance.
Disk Cleanup finds files unneeded by system and removes them from drive
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clears space to store more files.
Hard drives work best when kept under 80% full. Disk Cleanup can help but better solution for
large storage needs is to add another hard drive, or replace the current drive with a larger
capacity drive (after using System Backup Image to capture everything on the old drive)
Disk Cleanup can be accessed from Start Menu | Computer
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Disk Cleanup works on both internal and external drives.
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Right-click on the drive in the list and choose Properties from the context menu that
pops up.
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Click Disk Cleanup button
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After the computer calculates how much space will be reacquired, another popup shows
a list of file groups that can be cleaned out to free up space.
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If the check boxes are empty, click in them to choose those files to cleanup.
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NOTE: the video does not describe the actions of the Show Files button that is visible. If
you want to see the exact files that will be cleaned out by Disk Cleanup, go ahead and
click this button to find out.
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The Cleanup System Files button also may be visible. If it is, click this button at some
point as part of the Disk Cleanup process. The button will not appear if there's no need
to clean out these files.
Disk Cleanup can empty your computer's trash can, called the Recycle Bin.
NOTE: Deleted files don't get removed from your drive immediately. They're moved into the
Recycle Bin and won't be fully removed from your disk drive until the Recycle Bin is cleaned
out. This allows you to recover files that you may have accidentally deleted, or that you
changed your mind about and decided to hold onto after all.
Opening the Recycle Bin before it's cleaned out will show the files that have been deleted. If
selected, then selecting Restore, will return those files to the location where they were
originally deleted from. An empty Recycle Bin, on the other hand, means there are no files
remaining to be Restored.
Disk Cleanup is the most prominently displayed maintenance tool. Others can be found under
the Tools tab on the Properties menu for the drive you right-clicked earlier: Error-Checking
(Scandisk), Defragmentation, and Backup.
The error-checking function is carried out by Scandisk (which is still called Chkdsk on some
systems). This takes a long time. Clicking Check Now will offer a popup with two options:
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automatically fix (file) errors
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scan and repair bad sectors on the drive.
Normally, the first is automatically checked and the second isn't. It doesn't hurt to check the
second as well, but it does make Scandisk take longer to complete.
Scandisk won't run while Windows is running, and it will tell you
this. If you schedule it to start when the computer is next
restarted, please remember this. Scandisk can take a half hour or
more to complete.
Not shown in the video, this is what your screen will look like if
Scandisk is running:
Disk fragmentation is when disks get cluttered with many leftover bits of files from file system
processing. Files get broken apart to fit into open areas of the drive, and when those files are
later modified and re-saved, new fragments may be scattered around the disk surface.
Windows disks require a manual maintenance task to handle defragmentation chores.
Defragment Now... opens the popup window that allows you to schedule automatic
defragmentation chores on your hard drives.
When running it manually, Analyze your disk to see how badly fragmented the drive is, but
without actually doing any defragmenting. Defragment Disk goes ahead, first analyzing your
drive, and defragments your drive, too, if needed.
If your drive is heavily fragmented, running the defragmenter for the first time will probably
take a long time, sometimes hours, but it will result in a noticeable improvement in
performance.
System Backup takes a lot of separate storage space, and it really matters most when your hard
drive fails. The Windows backup tool is a simple (read “minimal”) file backup system. Other
backup tools exist in the marketplace that do far more, such as cloud storage, (one of these is
called Carbonite and is visible in some of the video screenshots). Even those can be less than
ideal if you have a slow Internet connection and lots of large files to move around.
Nevertheless, if you want to use it, the first thing you'll have to do is set it up. The menu is self
explanatory. All you need to do is designate an external drive where you'll save your backed up
files, and then set up a backup schedule. NOTE: the video doesn't specify that you can also
back up your files to DVDs or to a network folder (which is an older version of online/cloud
storage.)
Creating a system repair disc is available on the Backup window. You should do this as soon as
you can while your computer is working properly. A system repair disc is most often used when
you can't properly start up your computer. The Repair Disk(s) contain files that allow the
computer to boot from the Repair Disk instead of your hard drive. You need a writeable DVD
to create this disk. Once created, label it and safe it where you can find it if the computer fails.
System Image also creates DVDs that can help you restore the data on your drives. System
Image is essentially a picture of the contents of your disk drives as they exist when the image is
made. If you need to replace your old (probably failed) hard drive, loading a disk image will
copy the picture of your old drive onto your new one. You'll still have to reinstall and setup
programs, but all your old data files and documents will be accessible on the new drive. Again,
it takes quite a long time to create a system image so it's not done very often.
Another even fuller maintenance idea is to CLONE your system, NOTE: This was beyond the
scope of the video, so it wasn't mentioned. Cloning your system allows you to completely reset
the entire computer, including all the installed software, when it's loaded onto a computer. It's a
brute force way to clear up nagging problems in a computer, and is not something to be taken
lightly, but it's a useful tool to keep in your arsenal if you're afraid someone is going to really
mess up your computer. A well-known open source cloning program is called Clonezilla, which
can be downloaded and run for free.
An ideal time to create a cloned system image is when your computer is new and all of your
most useful software has been installed and configured, and everything is pristine. Making a
system clone image at this time will allow you to return to that state if something dire
subsequently happens to your computer. Of course, everything that's been added to the system
since it was cloned will not be in the image, so you'll have to reinstall newer programs that
weren't in the cloned image.
Hardcore performance junkies will often clone new system images of their latest configuration
whenever they add new software they're going to want to keep using. Most of us don't go to
this kind of extreme, but if your system needs to be operating at cutting edge efficiency, it's
worth considering cloning as part of a routine maintenance system.