Built-in maintenance tools and techniques

Built-in maintenance tools and techniques

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To clean the test PC, I used — and I suggest you use — the maintenance tools and techniques discussed in two Windows Secrets articles: the Jan. 10, 2013, Top Story, “Let your PC start the new year right!,” and the Jan. 16 Top Story “Keep a healthy PC: A routine-maintenance guide.”

A complete PC-maintenance process is laid out in those articles, along with numerous links you can follow for additional how-to information. The tools and techniques discussed work on all current Windows versions. Most even work on XP!

Allow some time for the tune-up. Depending on when and how much maintenance you’ve previously done on your system, the complete process can take anywhere from a few minutes to several hours. (Some tasks, such as defragging and malware-scanning, will take some time to complete, but you don’t have to stay at your PC.)

Once all the maintenance tasks are completed, we’re ready to establish some baseline measurements.

• • To make sure all operating system files are valid and uncorrupted, run Windows’ built-in System File Checker (sfc.exe; more info). Let the tool, shown in this Figure, try to correct any problems it uncovers.

• • • To access Reliability Monitor:

    • - Win7/8: Open Control Panel in Category view. Under System and Security, click Review your computer’s status and then click Maintenance. Next, under Check for solutions to problem reports, click View reliability history.

    • - Vista: Click Start, type “perfmon” into the search box, and then press Enter. In the Reliability and Performance Monitor window’s left-hand navigation pane, click down through Reliability and Performance/Monitoring Tools/Reliability Monitor

• Startup/shutdown speed: It takes a few steps to quantify startup/shutdown performance, but it isn’t hard. In fact, all you need is anything that measures seconds.

For startup, carefully time how long your system takes to go from power-on to a stable desktop. Don’t run any applications; immediately measure shutdown time by starting the clock when you click Shut down and stopping the clock at lights-out.

That method works, but I prefer to remove the effects of human reflexes from the results. Instead, I used two very simple batch files to automatically record precise start and stop times.

If you’d like to try automatic start/stop timing, here’s how to create the batch files:

• Open Notepad and enter (or copy/paste) the following two lines:

echo Restart began at %time% >> “C:\Users\{username}\Desktop\timelog.txt”

shutdown -f -r -t 00

• • • Replace {username} with your Windows sign-in. For example, my path would be:C:\Users\Fred\Desktop\timelog.txt. Save the file to the desktop and name it timedrestart.bat.

    • Now create the second batch file. Open Notepad again and enter (copy/paste) the following two lines:

echo Restart ended at %time% >> “C:\Users\{username}\Desktop\timelog.txt”

exit

• • • Again, replace {username} with your own Windows user name.

    • Name this second file bootdone.bat and save it to your PC’s Startup folder, typically located in the following path. (Again, do not put the first batch file — timedrestart.bat — in the start folder.)

C:\Users\{username}\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Startup

For the final time, replace {username} with your own. (You might have to unhide Windows’ hidden files to seeAppData.)

In practice, here’s how you’d use the files. Note: This assumes you’re not using a Windows sign-in password (more on that below).

With your system freshly maintained, fully booted, operating normally, and with no other software running, clicktimedrestart.bat in Windows/File Explorer. That file will write the current time to a timelog.txt file on your desktop and then trigger an immediate forced warm restart.

When the reboot completes, bootdone.bat (in the Startup folder) will automatically record the finish time in the sametimelog.txt file.

Your resulting timelog.txt file will contain pairs of lines, like these:

Restart began at 18:39:48.70

Restart ended at 18:41:17.67

Doing a little math (or using a tool such as the free online Time Calculator) will quickly reveal the exact amount of time this full shutdown/restart cycle took. For example, in the above example, the time is 1 minute and 29 seconds (rounded to the nearest second).

Whether you’re using the manual or automatic timing methods, you should perform several full restart cycles, back to back. Average and save the results with the other metrics you’re gathering.

Note: For maximum accuracy, ensure that no unnecessary external factors interfere with the boot process. For example, I temporarily configured my test PC (a Win7 box) to automatically sign in to Windows, avoiding the usual sign-in pause during the reboot process (more info). I also made sure there was nothing in the optical drive and that no USB drives were plugged in.

Other items: If there are other maintenance tasks or optimizations that you wish to perform, now’s the time. Likewise, make note of any additional maintenance metrics that are important to you.

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