Desktop & Laptop Preventive Maintenance Checklist
This was originally written for one of my previous graduate classes, but since it has become a topic in one of the courses I teach at Triton College, I felt a need to post it here. This was written for a Windows 7 machine over a year ago, but I have updated many of these items so they could possibly apply to both Windows 10 and Mac OS machines as well.
I routinely use to have to perform these steps for my mother-in-law’s laptop. I say “use to” because I’m tired of having to do it for her every few months, because she never learns her lesson – she routinely plays games on websites that run ads, and she clicks those ads (either by accident or on purpose), or she clicks on a piece of media sent to her seemingly randomly through Facebook, or she clicks on emails from people she doesn’t know, and she gets viruses. I have shown her several times what to avoid, told her what to look out for, and walked her through these techniques below as well as run them for her multiple times, but she won’t change her ways, or feigns ignorance. It’s gotten to the point where I refuse to help her, and I tell her to either take it to GeekSquad or buy a new laptop. She has done the latter the last three years in a row, AFTER taking a laptop to GeekSquad and finding out that the cost of maintenance is almost as much as a new laptop...
Items 2 - 9 were given to me by the IT department at Triton College when I first started teaching computer science classes, because this is what they do when running routine maintenance on Windows workstations all over campus. It’s what I do routinely for my personal Windows 7 laptops and desktop. To be most thorough, perform steps 3 - 9 in “safe mode” - here are some instructions for Windows computers from ESET.com.
Here are the 10 things you should tell your mother-in-law to do (and maybe show her how if you have the patience...):
1. Configure the internet service provider’s firewall on your router.
Depending on your service provider, you may or may not have been provided with a router to internet access. Newer AT&T routers come with a complex username and password system already set up out of box, and the installation tech should walk you through setting it up for yourself before they leave. Older AT&T routers might not be configured, and Comcast/Xfinity makes you buy your own router, so you should definitely not just leave this to factory default. Typically the username AND password are both “admin”, which means that anyone could easily hack this if you never changed it. If necessary call the manufacturer’s or internet service provider’s tech support to help with this - it should be free with the purchase or service.
2. Delete your browser history and configure browser to delete history upon quitting.
Your browser uses “cookies” and “temporary internet files” stored in the cache to make websites load faster on your computer - it’s a lot faster to look to your locally saved images and strings of text to auto-fill forms on your own hard drive than it is to have sites look to a web server somewhere else in the world to load a page. This way the only thing that needs to be loaded on any given page is anything updated after the last time you visited. The problem is that this is where viruses and malware might look for strings of text that can be used against you, like 16 digits for a credit card number, or 9 digits for a social security number, etc. Each browser is slightly different, and setting up your browser to delete browser history and cache upon quitting the app might SLIGHTLY slow down your surfing experience by a few seconds the next time you open your browser, but isn’t that little bit of time worth possibly preventing someone from stealing your personal information?
Check out one of these handy articles from Syracuse University on how to clear out the history and cache from several popular browsers.
3. Install and configure an antivirus software and download the latest update.
Some Windows 7 machines come with antivirus pre-installed, but these are usually a trial offer until you pay for either McAfee’s or Norton’s antivirus. Windows 10 computers come with Windows Defender already installed, which will work like a firewall or virus/malware filter, but according to this article from PC Magazine, there are possible free or pay versions that may be better. Free versions are available to download like Avast or AVG if you are willing to put up with some infrequent ads. Otherwise pay for either Norton or McAfee, both reliable and trusted, but both require a subscription that is only good if the subscription is current.
Macintosh computers do not typically get viruses, typically, and when they do it usually makes international headlines. Let's clear up a popular myth - a Macintosh CAN get a virus, but they usually don't for one reason... Windows desktop and laptop computers make up about 90% of the computer user market, and Apple desktops and laptops make up around 10%. The evil-doers that do evil things want to affect the most computers possible, so Windows is usually the target. That's not to say that Macs are immune, its just not as likely to happen, but it never hurts to be safe than sorry.
Whether you buy it or pay for it, make sure it is installed, actively running on startup, actively running in the background, and set to automatically download updates AND to automatically scan. Updates can come at any time, because evildoers do not make viruses on a schedule. Most of these companies have techs working 24/7 to create the fixes for the thousands of viruses that are created every day. Viruses can be just a prank, or extremely malignant, and some can wait until certain conditions are right to strike. You could download a contaminated game file this afternoon and open it, and then shut down, but the virus is waiting for startup to actually turn on and do its dirty work. Let antivirus download updates automatically and then set a time to regularly scan. Every day might be overkill, but at least once a week isn’t a bad idea - like on Saturday night when you’re out and not on the computer anyway, so if it takes a couple hours to do a quick scan it isn’t interrupting your workflow.
4. Run a FULL antivirus scan
Upon installing your antivirus for the first time AND applying the latest update, then run a FULL scan. This will be very thorough and scan all internal and external hard drives and any other peripheral devices attached like flash drives. Depending on the brand it may also scan your temporary internet files and cache as well as your registry (the files that hold essential functions for your internal hardware to run and load the personalized settings for your Windows installation - a place viruses might try to access upon startup in order to really compromise your system and get at your personal info). This scan will take a few hours minimum, so after you install the software, you will be waiting for a while so set this up when you know there will be some downtime from your machine. It might not be a bad idea to set up every fourth or fifth automatic weekly scan to be a full scan, again during downtime like late at night or on a weekend.
5. Install, update and run Malwarebytes
Antivirus software may or may not be capable of scanning for malware, another category of malignant software designed specifically to steal your identity. Even if it is, it may not be thorough enough and this will catch what antivirus software isn’t always designed to find. This software is free but has to be run manually unless you pay for a subscription. Run it once every couple of months and again, do this during downtime because it will probably take a couple hours.
6. Install, update and run Spybot
Spybot is another free but manual malware detector. Why run two? Well, that’s because these pieces of software may or may not be updated at the same time. The latest Malwarebytes update may or may not include definitions in Spybot’s latest update, so Spybot might catch what Malwarebytes misses, and vice versa, even with the latest update on both. Also run this during downtime as it will also take a couple of hours to be thorough. Do this the day after you run Malwarebytes.
7. Run both Malwarebytes AND Spybot AGAIN
Why run both again? Isn’t that redundant? Again, this is just a matter for being thorough so that you catch EVERYTHING. Sometimes restarting Windows before running both of these the second time helps catch something that is “hiding” like a worm or a trojan horse. The second scan of each should be much faster than the first because everything SHOULD be clean. Running these periodically like at the end of the day once a month isn’t a bad idea.
8. Install, update and run CCleaner
This software kind of runs like Malwarebytes or Spybot and a little like an antivirus all rolled into one, but is also does quite a bit more. Free but manual unless you pay for a subscription, this software will also will clear out your temporary internet files and cache from all browsers at once, clean out your registry, AND it will search for old Windows update files and prompt you to delete each item in a checklist - you choose if you want to permanently delete something or not.
When Microsoft pushes out a Windows update, the previous version is archived on your hard drive without you even knowing it. Well, these archives take up quite a bit of space and over time build up until you are out of hard drive space or you start running slow because you are out of “virtual RAM” (most operating systems use a hard drive’s free space to boost the performance of the physical RAM, and it is recommended that you keep your hard drive at least one - quarter free, if not more, specifically for this purpose). After running, be sure to empty your trash and you should see a massive growth in free space on your hard drive!
9. Run Disk Defragmenter
This software comes free with the Windows operating system and can be found in the Accessories folder through the Start menu. When all of that free space becomes available after running all of the steps above, it is scattered all over the hard drive. The internal hard drive runs kind of like a record on a phonograph, with the disks spinning while a head reads each of the plates from the inside to the outside. Files are stored in order of being saved from in to out, and they are indexed accordingly so they can be retrieved quickly. If a file is deleted, that head has to jump over a “gap” in the storage index, slowing down data retrieval and therefore system efficiency. If files are right next to each other, then the files can be accessed faster and therefore the system runs smoother. When there are a lot of gaps, even with all the garbage deleted, the system can still be a little sluggish, because those gaps actually contain pieces, or fragments, of old “deleted” files (when you empty the trash you are not really deleting files, you are just telling your hard drive to rewrite the index for those files’ sectors and set them as available to be written over - that’s why the police can still access deleted files off a harddrive when running forensic evidence scans, because the files aren’t really deleted, just set to be written over). Disk Defragmenter pushes together all of the data on your hard drive and rewrites the file index putting all the used space closer to the innermost part of the hard drive where the head starts and the free space toward the outside. This scan will definitely take a few hours but your system will run VERY smoothly after completing this step. Do this last step on a Friday when you leave for a weekend, and do it at least once every couple months.
10. Passwords - change them often and have more than one...
Routinely change your password. Make it complicated but something you can easily remember. Complicated means make it a mix of upper and lower case letters, and make sure there’s at least one number AND a special character or two. The more complicated, the less likely it will be easily hacked. And maybe have more than one, because if you are hacked and the bad guys get your ONE password, they now can potentially get access to EVERYTHING! What’s worse, having to remember multiple passwords, or getting your email account hacked and it has the same password as your online savings account?
How do you know if your password is complicated enough? Go to HowSecureIsMyPassword.net and try each of them out to see. This site runs an algorithm to see how long it would take a desktop PC to run a script to hack your password, and if it doesn’t come up in at least the “thousands of years” or more range, try adding more numbers, caps, and special characters. Also, many reputable vendors like credit cards, retail stores and banks also have some kind of meter on their sign up pages when creating an account and also on their update account pages to let you know if your password is strong or not. Many organizations make network users routinely change their passwords every few months, and many will not let you use any of the last 3 passwords on file for fear of compromising the system via hacking.
We go over many of these in both the college-level and middle school computer science classes I teach. Yes, I wrote all of these instructions out for my mother-in-law and I walked her through them several times. My wife even has them memorized for when she calls every few months complaining that her most recent laptop doesn’t work right anymore. We just got tired of helping her if she won’t be careful or take any time to do any preventive maintenance herself.
Just an FYI, I’m a computer science teacher and I’ve been tech savvy for years, and I’m CAREFUL and THOROUGH. I perform all of these routines on my personal computers regularly, and my identity has still been stolen, TWICE! Horror stories for another time...
I routinely use to have to perform these steps for my mother-in-law’s laptop. I say “use to” because I’m tired of having to do it for her every few months, because she never learns her lesson – she routinely plays games on websites that run ads, and she clicks those ads (either by accident or on purpose), or she clicks on a piece of media sent to her seemingly randomly through Facebook, or she clicks on emails from people she doesn’t know, and she gets viruses. I have shown her several times what to avoid, told her what to look out for, and walked her through these techniques below as well as run them for her multiple times, but she won’t change her ways, or feigns ignorance. It’s gotten to the point where I refuse to help her, and I tell her to either take it to GeekSquad or buy a new laptop. She has done the latter the last three years in a row, AFTER taking a laptop to GeekSquad and finding out that the cost of maintenance is almost as much as a new laptop...
Items 2 - 9 were given to me by the IT department at Triton College when I first started teaching computer science classes, because this is what they do when running routine maintenance on Windows workstations all over campus. It’s what I do routinely for my personal Windows 7 laptops and desktop. To be most thorough, perform steps 3 - 9 in “safe mode” - here are some instructions for Windows computers from ESET.com.
Here are the 10 things you should tell your mother-in-law to do (and maybe show her how if you have the patience...):
 |
| Image property of BelMedia downloaded from betriebseinrichtung.net |
1. Configure the internet service provider’s firewall on your router.
Depending on your service provider, you may or may not have been provided with a router to internet access. Newer AT&T routers come with a complex username and password system already set up out of box, and the installation tech should walk you through setting it up for yourself before they leave. Older AT&T routers might not be configured, and Comcast/Xfinity makes you buy your own router, so you should definitely not just leave this to factory default. Typically the username AND password are both “admin”, which means that anyone could easily hack this if you never changed it. If necessary call the manufacturer’s or internet service provider’s tech support to help with this - it should be free with the purchase or service.
 |
| Image property of Google and downloaded from GadgetHacks.com |
2. Delete your browser history and configure browser to delete history upon quitting.
Your browser uses “cookies” and “temporary internet files” stored in the cache to make websites load faster on your computer - it’s a lot faster to look to your locally saved images and strings of text to auto-fill forms on your own hard drive than it is to have sites look to a web server somewhere else in the world to load a page. This way the only thing that needs to be loaded on any given page is anything updated after the last time you visited. The problem is that this is where viruses and malware might look for strings of text that can be used against you, like 16 digits for a credit card number, or 9 digits for a social security number, etc. Each browser is slightly different, and setting up your browser to delete browser history and cache upon quitting the app might SLIGHTLY slow down your surfing experience by a few seconds the next time you open your browser, but isn’t that little bit of time worth possibly preventing someone from stealing your personal information?
Check out one of these handy articles from Syracuse University on how to clear out the history and cache from several popular browsers.
 |
| Logos are property of their respective manufacturers. Image downloaded from MakeTechEasier.com |
3. Install and configure an antivirus software and download the latest update.
Some Windows 7 machines come with antivirus pre-installed, but these are usually a trial offer until you pay for either McAfee’s or Norton’s antivirus. Windows 10 computers come with Windows Defender already installed, which will work like a firewall or virus/malware filter, but according to this article from PC Magazine, there are possible free or pay versions that may be better. Free versions are available to download like Avast or AVG if you are willing to put up with some infrequent ads. Otherwise pay for either Norton or McAfee, both reliable and trusted, but both require a subscription that is only good if the subscription is current.
Macintosh computers do not typically get viruses, typically, and when they do it usually makes international headlines. Let's clear up a popular myth - a Macintosh CAN get a virus, but they usually don't for one reason... Windows desktop and laptop computers make up about 90% of the computer user market, and Apple desktops and laptops make up around 10%. The evil-doers that do evil things want to affect the most computers possible, so Windows is usually the target. That's not to say that Macs are immune, its just not as likely to happen, but it never hurts to be safe than sorry.
Whether you buy it or pay for it, make sure it is installed, actively running on startup, actively running in the background, and set to automatically download updates AND to automatically scan. Updates can come at any time, because evildoers do not make viruses on a schedule. Most of these companies have techs working 24/7 to create the fixes for the thousands of viruses that are created every day. Viruses can be just a prank, or extremely malignant, and some can wait until certain conditions are right to strike. You could download a contaminated game file this afternoon and open it, and then shut down, but the virus is waiting for startup to actually turn on and do its dirty work. Let antivirus download updates automatically and then set a time to regularly scan. Every day might be overkill, but at least once a week isn’t a bad idea - like on Saturday night when you’re out and not on the computer anyway, so if it takes a couple hours to do a quick scan it isn’t interrupting your workflow.
4. Run a FULL antivirus scan
Upon installing your antivirus for the first time AND applying the latest update, then run a FULL scan. This will be very thorough and scan all internal and external hard drives and any other peripheral devices attached like flash drives. Depending on the brand it may also scan your temporary internet files and cache as well as your registry (the files that hold essential functions for your internal hardware to run and load the personalized settings for your Windows installation - a place viruses might try to access upon startup in order to really compromise your system and get at your personal info). This scan will take a few hours minimum, so after you install the software, you will be waiting for a while so set this up when you know there will be some downtime from your machine. It might not be a bad idea to set up every fourth or fifth automatic weekly scan to be a full scan, again during downtime like late at night or on a weekend.
 |
| Image property of and downloaded from ExtremeTech.com |
5. Install, update and run Malwarebytes
Antivirus software may or may not be capable of scanning for malware, another category of malignant software designed specifically to steal your identity. Even if it is, it may not be thorough enough and this will catch what antivirus software isn’t always designed to find. This software is free but has to be run manually unless you pay for a subscription. Run it once every couple of months and again, do this during downtime because it will probably take a couple hours.
 |
| Image property of and downloaded from Lynda.com |
6. Install, update and run Spybot
Spybot is another free but manual malware detector. Why run two? Well, that’s because these pieces of software may or may not be updated at the same time. The latest Malwarebytes update may or may not include definitions in Spybot’s latest update, so Spybot might catch what Malwarebytes misses, and vice versa, even with the latest update on both. Also run this during downtime as it will also take a couple of hours to be thorough. Do this the day after you run Malwarebytes.
7. Run both Malwarebytes AND Spybot AGAIN
Why run both again? Isn’t that redundant? Again, this is just a matter for being thorough so that you catch EVERYTHING. Sometimes restarting Windows before running both of these the second time helps catch something that is “hiding” like a worm or a trojan horse. The second scan of each should be much faster than the first because everything SHOULD be clean. Running these periodically like at the end of the day once a month isn’t a bad idea.
 |
| Image property of fixitfixitfixit and downloaded from the YouTube channel. |
8. Install, update and run CCleaner
This software kind of runs like Malwarebytes or Spybot and a little like an antivirus all rolled into one, but is also does quite a bit more. Free but manual unless you pay for a subscription, this software will also will clear out your temporary internet files and cache from all browsers at once, clean out your registry, AND it will search for old Windows update files and prompt you to delete each item in a checklist - you choose if you want to permanently delete something or not.
When Microsoft pushes out a Windows update, the previous version is archived on your hard drive without you even knowing it. Well, these archives take up quite a bit of space and over time build up until you are out of hard drive space or you start running slow because you are out of “virtual RAM” (most operating systems use a hard drive’s free space to boost the performance of the physical RAM, and it is recommended that you keep your hard drive at least one - quarter free, if not more, specifically for this purpose). After running, be sure to empty your trash and you should see a massive growth in free space on your hard drive!
 |
| Image property of Microsoft and downloaded from Scottish Qualifications Authority |
9. Run Disk Defragmenter
This software comes free with the Windows operating system and can be found in the Accessories folder through the Start menu. When all of that free space becomes available after running all of the steps above, it is scattered all over the hard drive. The internal hard drive runs kind of like a record on a phonograph, with the disks spinning while a head reads each of the plates from the inside to the outside. Files are stored in order of being saved from in to out, and they are indexed accordingly so they can be retrieved quickly. If a file is deleted, that head has to jump over a “gap” in the storage index, slowing down data retrieval and therefore system efficiency. If files are right next to each other, then the files can be accessed faster and therefore the system runs smoother. When there are a lot of gaps, even with all the garbage deleted, the system can still be a little sluggish, because those gaps actually contain pieces, or fragments, of old “deleted” files (when you empty the trash you are not really deleting files, you are just telling your hard drive to rewrite the index for those files’ sectors and set them as available to be written over - that’s why the police can still access deleted files off a harddrive when running forensic evidence scans, because the files aren’t really deleted, just set to be written over). Disk Defragmenter pushes together all of the data on your hard drive and rewrites the file index putting all the used space closer to the innermost part of the hard drive where the head starts and the free space toward the outside. This scan will definitely take a few hours but your system will run VERY smoothly after completing this step. Do this last step on a Friday when you leave for a weekend, and do it at least once every couple months.
:max_bytes(150000):strip_icc()/wifi-password-57f560ef5f9b586c359127f9.png) |
| Image property of Dacian_G at iStockPhoto.com and downloaded from Lifewire.com |
10. Passwords - change them often and have more than one...
Routinely change your password. Make it complicated but something you can easily remember. Complicated means make it a mix of upper and lower case letters, and make sure there’s at least one number AND a special character or two. The more complicated, the less likely it will be easily hacked. And maybe have more than one, because if you are hacked and the bad guys get your ONE password, they now can potentially get access to EVERYTHING! What’s worse, having to remember multiple passwords, or getting your email account hacked and it has the same password as your online savings account?
How do you know if your password is complicated enough? Go to HowSecureIsMyPassword.net and try each of them out to see. This site runs an algorithm to see how long it would take a desktop PC to run a script to hack your password, and if it doesn’t come up in at least the “thousands of years” or more range, try adding more numbers, caps, and special characters. Also, many reputable vendors like credit cards, retail stores and banks also have some kind of meter on their sign up pages when creating an account and also on their update account pages to let you know if your password is strong or not. Many organizations make network users routinely change their passwords every few months, and many will not let you use any of the last 3 passwords on file for fear of compromising the system via hacking.
We go over many of these in both the college-level and middle school computer science classes I teach. Yes, I wrote all of these instructions out for my mother-in-law and I walked her through them several times. My wife even has them memorized for when she calls every few months complaining that her most recent laptop doesn’t work right anymore. We just got tired of helping her if she won’t be careful or take any time to do any preventive maintenance herself.
Just an FYI, I’m a computer science teacher and I’ve been tech savvy for years, and I’m CAREFUL and THOROUGH. I perform all of these routines on my personal computers regularly, and my identity has still been stolen, TWICE! Horror stories for another time...
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