How To Digital Spring Clean Your Computer

It’s been a long and hard winter. The birds have started chirping, flowers have started sprouting and we’ve finally been blessed with more daylight hours. So whilst this may be the time to give your house, your car or your garden a spring clean, your computer needs its own replenishing – a digital spring clean.

Cleaning up your PC is a smart move for many reasons. Not just to open up some disk space but also for security reasons. Removing unused software or online applications, changing passwords and credentials and old data that you will probably never need again, will aid to the prevention of hackers or stolen data.

So, we all know how to polish our personal space, but...

How to digital spring clean your computers?

1. Delete old and unused programmes and files.

Much like in our houses, over time we collect things that we don’t need and it starts to clog everything up. Our computers are exactly the same. We have documents, pictures and downloads that we don’t need and this is extra weight for your computer to have to carry.

Purging everything you haven’t touched in a while is always satisfying. But what if you might need these files again? In this circumstance, you will need to look into options for archiving old data. You can do this by using a Cloud service like Dropbox or Google Docs, which are both free to use online and accessible anywhere with internet. They are often available for use on multiple devices.

However, if you feel that you won’t be in need of these files very often, an external hard drive may be the best option for you. These come with many different storage capacities and prices to suit what you will personally need and they can be kept it in the office or at home and added to when needed.

Deleting a program the generic way doesn’t always remove all of the data that is attached and leaves behind temp files and settings that will eat up your space. Using an application such as Uninstaller, you can see all of the programs and their attached hidden files allowing you to remove everything in one place and at the click of a single button.

2. Tidy up your desktop.

Are you one of those people that saves everything to the desktop until the clutter of your home screen is too unbearable to touch? I thought you might be. Saving to your desktop takes up precious resources from your machine and quite frankly, just looks messy. Get rid of what you can using tip 1 and file the rest into folders that aren’t visible every time you boot up.

3. Update your drivers.

What is a driver? This is a group of files that enable one or more hardware devices to communicate with the computer's operating system. Without drivers, the computer would not be able to send and receive data correctly to hardware devices, such as a printer.

Everyone knows how important it is to do updates for security reasons but, speaking from experience, it’s rarely recognised that this can also dramatically improve the speed and performance of your computer.

Using a tool such as Driver Booster, you can run a scan of your PC and will be shown all the latest updates that are available for your system.

4. Run a virus scan.

Viruses and Malware can not only put you, your data and your personal information at risk but they can slow things down and cause your PC to lag. An active Anti-Virus is always a need for any computer. It’s naive to think that just because you’re being safe that you won’t get a virus.

Using Bitdefenderfor free you can put a world-renowned shield around your computer and ensure that you are safe when browsing the internet. Running a full scan of your computer will also show and remove any threats that may have been hiding already.

For any further help or information, please contact one of our heroes.

Read more from our blog