PC Maintenance Myths

Here at TNMS, our first priority is to simplify the world of technology for the non-geek world.  And since most of the non-geek world owns some form of a PC, we have setup a recurring series on PC maintenance.  Hit the jump for this installment…

Back in May, Kurt brought you his epic series and video on the inside of a computer.  He went into great detail on parts, installation, and what every little piece does.  In early July, I followed that up with a piece explaining some of the best PC maintenance tools out there.  And in the near future, we have another video series on PC maintenance.

Today, I‘m going to focus on PC myths.  Lifehacker recently ran an article debunking many of the myths of the Windows world.  I’ll admit – even I believed some of the myths were truths until I read the piece.

The majority of the Lifehacker piece is fairly high-level tech geek speak stuff, so I’ll do my best to break it down for you.

First things first – if something sounds too good to be true… well, you know the rest.  Many websites out there purport to clean up your RAM or you Hard Drive in just one click of their software.  Truth is, yep – they clean it out, but at the expense of another part of your PC.  Essentially, the RAM “Cleaners” out there are just moving the information that your computer stores on the RAM to another location, thereby slowing down your system even more over the long haul.  It might respond a lot faster for a few minutes, hours or even days.  But eventually, it will slow to a crawl.

Second – if you don’t need to mess around in the Windows Registry, don’t.  There are plenty of legitimate programs out there that will do the cleaning for you, (CCleaner being my program of choice) but unless you know exactly what you’re removing, the minor increase in computer efficiency isn’t worth the risk of removing registry information.

Third – moving or altogether removing system files in order to increase the speed at which Windows boots up.  Let me just say this – there is no valid reason to ever move system files aside from deliberately trying to make your system crash so you can go poke fun at the pimple-faced seventeen year old kid working behind the Geek Squad desk at Best Buy.  None.  Don’t try it – the files were put there for a reason, and every program on your computer knows where they are right now.  Leave them alone.  Step away from the keyboard.

Lifehacker mentions a handful of other myths that have popped up over the years, some exclusive to Windows Vista, others for XP, and even others for both.  In general, the best method for keeping your system clean is bi-weekly or monthly system scans using the software previously mentioned here on TNMS.  And stay tuned for more PC Maintenance updates as the weeks go by.