Taking care of hardrive/software

[phat_mats]

Hi,

I know very little about caring for computers. I defrag everyone and a while, try not to get thousands of downloads hanging aorund on my desktop. THATS ABOUT IT! As far as running diskclean ups, RAM optimizers, downlaoding files to certain areas, truly keeping your hardrive clean, avoiding spyware, optimizing performance in general, as well as baking up files and using the rapid restore etc ....
I know thats a lot and I hope this is in the right forum, but what do you guys all do to ensure you are getting the most out of your system?

Thanks

[ibmuser]

You should have some basic protection. Firewall/Virus/Anti-spy tools in particular. Programs below are free so they should get you started.
These are only suggestions - check online reviews for other possibilities.

You might try System wiper to clear junk:
http://www.iisoftware.net/index.php?clean.html


Free virus program
http://www.grisoft.com/us/us_dwnl_free.php


or run from Trend (online)
http://housecall.trendmicro.com/houseca ... t_corp.asp

Pop-up blocker:
http://www.mathies.com/popthis/

or one by EMS
http://www.kolumbus.fi/eero.muhonen/FS/fs.htm

Firewall by Sygate (my choice):
http://smb.sygate.com/

or Zone Alarm:
http://www.zonelabs.com/store/content/c ... ?lid=ho_za

Anti-spy tools:
http://www.lavasoftusa.com/

or: Spybot:
http://www.safer-networking.org/

[phat_mats]

It's been a week or so since I posted this thread. In that time I hae been reading online reviews and trying to learn as much about it as I can. Basically in terms of internet security;

Firewall - Zone Alarm Pro 4.5 (includes pop-up blocker/cookie cleaner)

Anti-virus - Norton

Spyware - Adaware 6.0 and Spybot Search and Destroy

But in terms of keeping your drives clean and optimized I am still completely confused. Most system utility suites seem flawed in one way or another. IBm has recue/recovery and rapid restore incase of an emergeny anyway so you don't really need a suite for that. It seems that running a suite all the time would slow down performance

My best option seems to be too use partition magic. After that just use windows built in defrag, msconfig for startup, scandisk for disk clean up, and PC Doctor. The only thing maybe missing is a registry cleaner?

Is there any advantage to wiping the system clean and then reinstalling rescue/recovery, rapid restore, pc doctor, win dvd?

As I am not a computer guy and getting my information mostyl from www.pcworld.com reviews does it sound like I am on the right track. Thanks all for your help.

[ibmuser]

not sure exactly what you're looking for but perhaps a program like system mechanic will help. shouldn't slow you down - if anything it should keep your PC running faster, cleaner, and error-free.

http://www.iolo.com/sm/

[phat_mats]

according to the review at pcworld.com it seemed like many of the features on system mechanic and other suites were already included in xp and worked just as well on xp, the ones that weren't (rapid restore recue/recover type functions) are icluded on IBM. I was wondering whether I really needed a suite?

What are all of you guys doing on your T-series to optamize performance and reliability?