Advice on PC maintenance required

[daisya]

I want to put some written details together for a family member to help maintain and clean up a very slow computer. They know nothing about PC's so it will have to be idiot proof - no downloads etc apart from malwarebytes.... they've got a good AV and firewall. Can anyone give me some details please as to what is needed to put this together as in keeping the PC in good working order and allow it to run a little faster?

They have Win XP and using Google Chrome of which I have no experience. I know how to maintain IE but they need to just do the housekeeping with deleting browsing history, temp files, defrag, clean disk etc but need good explanation as to how to do it all.

Thanks for any help you're able to give me.
Daisy

[MarkRae]

Firstly, you can completely forget about defragmentation. Because the machine is running WinXP, the hard drive will be formatted using NTFS, so even if you do bother defragmenting it it will fragment again immediately.

Secondly, you should look at msconfig: http://www.netsquirre...nfig/msconfig_xp.html

This will allow you to check for any services or applications which are set to start when the machine boots up but which may be unnecessary.

Thirdly, have a look through the installed applications and remove anything which you are certain is not being used.

Fourthly, see if it's possible to add extra RAM to the machine.

[daisya]

Thanks Mark, it's just that I won't be doing anything on the PC as I don't live near, they will have to do it themselves so I'll look into what you've said and try to put some ideas on paper. Don't know what I can do about what starts on boot-up and I don't think they will want to touch that being complete novices on computers apart from switching it on/off, emailing and browsing and cautiously buying online.

[MarkRae]

I strongly suggest, then, that they take the machine to a specialist. The analogy I always use for this is car servicing. I love driving and consider myself a good driver, but I wouldn't know where to begin with doing my car's annual service so I take it to a garage where a trained mechanic does it for me.

I certainly would want to try to service my own car armed with a set of instructions from a family member, no matter how well-intentioned... :-)

[daisya]

Thanks Mark, know what you mean but this was just ordinary "stuff" which we all have to learn to do to do good housekeeping (delete temp files et al). Can understand what you're saying though, ta.