• 1.  If you are prompted for an administrator password or confirmation, type the password or provide confirmation.

(www.microsoft.com N.A.)

To install optional updates, you need to review and then select them from the list of updates that Windows finds for your computer. Optional updates are not installed automatically.

• 1. Open Windows Update by clicking the Start button

• 1.  If you are prompted for an administrator password or confirmation, type the password or provide confirmation.

(www.microsoft.com N.A.)

Applies to Windows 7

Action Center is a central place to view alerts and take actions that can help keep Windows running smoothly.

Action Center notifies you when items need your attention.

Action Center lists important messages about security and maintenance settings that need your attention. Red items in Action Center are labeled Important, and indicate significant issues that should be addressed soon, such as an outdated antivirus program that needs updating. Yellow items are suggested tasks that you should consider addressing, like recommended maintenance tasks.

• • Open Action Center by clicking the Start button

• • , clicking Control Panel, and then, under System and Security, clicking Review your computer's status.

To view details about either the Security or Maintenance section, click the heading or the arrow next to the heading to expand or collapse the section. If you don’t want to see certain types of messages, you can choose to hide them from view.

Get a quick summary of your computer's status.

You can quickly see whether there are any new messages in Action Center by placing your mouse over the Action Center icon

in the notification area, at the far right of the taskbar. Click the icon to view more detail, and click a message to address the issue. Or, open Action Center to view the message in its entirety.

If you’re having a problem with your computer, check Action Center to see if the issue has been identified. If it hasn’t, you can also find helpful links to troubleshooters and other tools that can help fix problems.

(www.microsoft.com N.A.)

The first time that you connect to a network, you must choose a network location. This automatically sets the appropriate firewall and security settings for the type of network that you connect to. If you connect to networks in different locations (for example, a network at your home, at a local coffee shop, or at work), choosing a network location can help ensure that your computer is always set to an appropriate security level.

There are four network locations:

• • Choose Home network for home networks or when you know and trust the people and devices on the network. Computers on a home network can belong to a homegroup. Network discovery is turned on for home networks, which allows you to see other computers and devices on the network and allows other network users to see your computer. For more information, see What is network discovery?

  • Choose Work network for small office or other workplace networks. Network discovery, which allows you to see other computers and devices on a network and allows other network users to see your computer, is on by default, but you can't create or join a homegroup. For more information, see What is network discovery?

  • Choose Public network for networks in public places (such as coffee shops or airports). This location is designed to keep your computer from being visible to other computers around you and to help protect your computer from any malicious software from the Internet. HomeGroup is not available on public networks, and network discovery is turned off. You should also choose this option if you're connected directly to the Internet without using a router, or if you have a mobile broadband connection.

  • The Domain network location is used for domain networks such as those at enterprise workplaces. This type of network location is controlled by your network administrator and can't be selected or changed.

Note

• • If you know you won’t need to share files or printers, the safest choice is public network.

To choose a network location

• 1. Open Network and Sharing Center by clicking the Start button

• • • 1. Network and Sharing Center

Warning

• • Choosing Home network or Work network changes the firewall configuration to allow communication. This can be a security risk. For more information, see What are the risks of allowing programs through a firewall?

What makes a home or work network safe to connect to?

To help ensure that a home or work network is safe to connect to, make sure that it has the following:

• • For wireless networks, a wireless connection encrypted with Wi‑Fi Protected Access (WPA or WPA2). (WPA2 is preferred because it is more secure than WPA.)

  • For all networks, a firewall or other device with network address translation (NAT) , which is connected between your computer or wireless access point and your cable or DSL modem.

 The Hard Drive needs about 15% free space so it can use it for defragmenting the drive, for burning CD's and DVD's, and for a variety of other tasks.

 Windows 7 and Vista were the first to create user profiles when you log in.  It is a collection of user data and settings and consists of two general items:

1.A user folder together with it's subfolders in the C:\Users folder.  This folder contains a group of subfolders called the user pfofile namespace.

2.Ntuser.data is a file stored in the C:\Users\username folder and contains user settings.

32-bit Windows: Program files are stored in C:\Program Files

64-bit Windows: 64-bit programs are in C:\Program Files

                           32-bit programs are in C:\Program Files (x86)

 The Registry is a database for most user data.

Registry location is C:\Windows\system32\config

Backup of the Registry: C:\Windows\system32\config\RegBack

Fonts: C:\Windows\Fonts

Temporary files: C:\Windows\Temp

Offline files: C:\Windows\CSC  used for Client Side Caching (CSC) so a user can use files when not connected to a corporate network.

 The user profile is stored in C:\Documents and Settings folder.

The following procedure cleans up files associated with your user account. You can also use Disk Cleanup to clean up all the files on your computer.

• 1. Open Disk Cleanup by clicking the Start button

• 1. . In the search box, type Disk Cleanup, and then, in the list of results, click Disk Cleanup.

  2. In the Drives list, click the hard disk drive that you want to clean up, and then click OK.

  3. In the Disk Cleanup dialog box, on the Disk Cleanup tab, select the check boxes for the file types that you want to delete, and then click OK.

  4. In the message that appears, click Delete files.

(www.microsoft.com N.A.)

• 1. Tap or click Optimize.  You might be asked for an admin password or to confirm your choice.

     1. Optimizing a drive might take anywhere from several minutes to a few hours to finish, depending on the size of the drive and degree of optimization needed. You can still use your PC during the optimization process.

(www.microsoft.com N.A.)

Over time and with regular use, files and folders on a computer's hard drive break down or become fragmented. When computer files are fragmented, they are typically disorganized and in the wrong place. This can cause the system to run slowly and to experience processing problems. Defragmenting the computer gathers and organizes the files, which usually improves retrieval time and the computer's overall performance.

For example, a computer program must access various files on the hard drive every time it is run. If those files are spread out on opposite sides of the hard drive instead of gathered and organized neatly, as they are supposed to be, the computer will have to work extra hard and take extra time to access the information it needs. In some cases, severe defragmenting may even cause a program to stop running entirely.

Defragmenting, also referred to as "defragging," reorganizes the hard drive by putting pieces of related data back together so that files are organized in a contiguous fashion. As a result, the computer system can access files more efficiently. By efficiently organizing files and folders, defragmenting will leave the computer's free space in one big chunk. This will allow new files to be saved in an orderly fashion, thereby reducing the need for future defragmentation.

Benefits of Defragging

As the overall size of disk drives keeps increasing, defragmenting a computer regularly may even help to increase its life-span. A system needs to work quite hard in order to collect fragmented information across larger and larger disks. Considering the amount of work this takes, it seems likely that defragmenting can help a hard drive last significantly longer.

Though some computer experts argue that today's operating systems are efficient enough to eliminate the need for defragmenting altogether, it is generally recommended that computer users defrag their systems on a regular basis. Average users will probably find that bimonthly defragmenting produces sufficient results. Users who notice a frequent loss of efficiency and speed may choose to defrag more often.

How to Defragment

All computer systems come with some type of defragmenter tool, commonly found under the "System Tools" option in Windows-based PC environments. Such tools typically come with an analysis feature that will actually tell users if their computers need defragging or not. You can also defragment disks from a "C prompt" command line using the "defrag" command. Additional information on how to defragment a computer should also be available on the Internet.

How often does Win7/Vista defrag?

Defragmenter is turned off by default.

Clusters:

The smallest unit of space on the hard disk that any software program can access is a sector, which usually consists of 512 bytes.  In order for FAT to manage files with some form of efficiency is to group sectors into larger blocks referred to as clusters, or allocation units. Cluster size, however, is not a predetermined size, but rather is determined by the size of the disk volume itself, with small volumes (disk sizes) resulting in smaller clusters, and larger volumes (disk sizes) using larger cluster sizes

FAU - File Allocation Unit:

Imagine that I give you a 100 dollars in one hand and another 100 dollars in the other hand. In one hand you have it by 1 dollar, in the other hand you have it by 10 dollars, in which hand would you count the hundred dollars faster? Obviously in the hand by 10 dollars!

The larger the Allocation Unit Size, the easier and faster it is to process that data and information from the hard disk. I seriously don't think that running out space is really an issue now a days because we are in the 21st century and we are no longer dealing with just Megabytes or Gigabytes but we are seriously beginning to deal with Terabytes!

The ideal Allocation Unit Size is based on the size of the partition on the hard disk that you would like to use it on!

4GB - 7GB = 4096 bytes (4K)

8GB - 15GB = 8192 bytes (8K)

16GB - 31GB = 16384 bytes (16K)

32GB - 63GB = 32768 bytes (32K)

64GB - 127GB = 65536 bytes (64K) and etc..................

(http://computersguide.blogspot.com N.A.)

Slack Space:

The term slack space refers to the storage area of a hard drive from the end of a stored file to the end of the file cluster in the hard drive. In typical hard drives, the computer stores files on the drive in clusters of a certain file size. For example, the file system on the hard drive may store data in clusters of four kilobytes. If the computer stores a file that is only two kilobytes in a four kilobyte cluster there will be two kilobytes of slack space.

(http://www.computerhope.com, N.A.)

Defrag solid-state drives?

In the case of a solid state drive every cluster is touching every other cluster. There is no head looking for data on a spinning hard drive. The data at the “end” is next to the data at the beginning. Every byte is accessible in the same amount of time no matter where it is mapped or placed.

…..So who cares?  You do! Your solid state drive in your EEE PC, MacBook Air, iphone and your USB drive all have one thing in common. LIMITED WRITE CYCLES.

Write cycles are when your 0’s are flipped to 1’s or your 1’s are flipped to zeros. Unlike reading data off of the drive (non destructive) writing to a Flash drive SSHD or an SD card is destructive and takes it one step closer to being worn out.

If you are old enough to remember paper and a pencil. :)   If you write your name on the paper you can read it over and over with no wear at all. If you erase it and rewrite it the paper begins to wear. After a few too many times erasing and writing, it wears out.

When you defrag your SSHD you are using up your write cycles and doing nothing to increase your speed or performance.

My best advice is to never open defrag on your Solid State HD XP or Vista machine. Leave your USB thumb drive alone too. If Microsoft bothers to keep XP and Vista up to date I would expect a patch or update to be released to recognize solid state drives and bypass the defrag option all together. (I am not holding my breath on the XP patch. It is not included in Service Pack 3.

(thepeoplegeek.wordpress.com, 2008)

Check your hard disk for errors

You can help solve some computer problems and improve the performance of your computer by making sure that your hard disk has no errors.

• 1. Open Computer by clicking the Start button

1. , and then clicking Computer.

   1. Right-click the hard disk drive that you want to check, and then click Properties.

   2. Click the Tools tab, and then, under Error-checking, click Check Now.

• 1.  If you are prompted for an administrator password or confirmation, type the password or provide confirmation.

     1. To automatically repair problems with files and folders that the scan detects, select Automatically fix file system errors. Otherwise, the disk check will simply report problems but not fix them.

     2. To perform a thorough disk check, select Scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors. This scan attempts to find and repair physical errors on the hard disk itself, and it can take much longer to complete.

     3. To check for both file errors and physical errors, select both Automatically fix file system errors and Scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors.

  2. Click Start.

Depending upon the size of your hard disk, this may take several minutes. For best results, don't use your computer for any other tasks while it's checking for errors.

(www.microsoft.com N.A.)

• 1. Open Programs and Features by clicking the Start button

• 1.  If you're prompted for an administrator password or confirmation, type the password or provide confirmation.

(www.microsoft.com N.A.)

• 1. Locate the file or folder that you want to compress.

  2. Right-click the file or folder, point to Send to, and then click Compressed (zipped) folder.

     1. A new compressed folder is created in the same location. To rename it, right-click the folder, click Rename, and then type the new name.

Applies to Windows 7

A common way to move or copy a file or folder is to select it and drag it to another location. For example, you can drag a file to the Recycle Bin to delete the file, or to a folder to copy or move it to that location.

How to drag files

What happens when you drag and drop a file depends on where you drag it. The following table describes what happens when you drag and drop a file to different locations.

Tips

• • Pay attention to pop-up messages that appear when dragging—you can use these to find out what will happen when you release the mouse button.

  • If you press and hold the right mouse button while dragging, a menu appears that lets you choose a specific action, such as copying or moving.

  • To learn other ways to copy files, see Copy and paste a file.

(www.microsoft.com N.A.)

If your computer lacks the random access memory (RAM) needed to run a program or operation, Windows uses virtual memory to compensate. To find out how much RAM your computer has, see Find out how much RAM your computer has.

Virtual memory combines your computer’s RAM with temporary space on your hard disk. When RAM runs low, virtual memory moves data from RAM to a space called a paging file. Moving data to and from the paging file frees up RAM so your computer can complete its work.

The more RAM your computer has, the faster your programs will generally run. If a lack of RAM is slowing your computer, you might be tempted to increase virtual memory to compensate. However, your computer can read data from RAM much more quickly than from a hard disk, so adding RAM is a better solution.

Virtual memory and error messages

If you receive error messages that warn of low virtual memory, you need to either add more RAM or increase the size of your paging file so that you can run the programs on your computer. Windows usually manages this automatically, but you can manually change the size of virtual memory if the default size isn't large enough for your needs.

(www.microsoft.com N.A.)

If you receive warnings that your virtual memory is low, you'll need to increase the minimum size of your paging file. Windows sets the initial minimum size of the paging file equal to the amount of random access memory (RAM) installed on your computer, and the maximum size equal to three times the amount of RAM installed on your computer. If you see warnings at these recommended levels, then increase the minimum and maximum sizes.

• 1. Open System by clicking the Start button

• 1.  If you're prompted for an administrator password or confirmation, type the password or provide confirmation.

  2. On the Advanced tab, under Performance, click Settings.

  3. Click the Advanced tab, and then, under Virtual memory, click Change.

  4. Clear the Automatically manage paging file size for all drives check box.

  5. Under Drive [Volume Label], click the drive that contains the paging file you want to change.

  6. Click Custom size, type a new size in megabytes in the Initial size (MB) or Maximum size (MB) box, click Set, and then click OK.

(www.microsoft.com N.A.)