General Computer Cleaning Guide

First off, this guide is intended for people who kind of know what they're doing on a computer, but if you're below that level, feel free to give it a shot, just understand that I am not responsible if you break something. As a “computer nerd” I am constantly bombarded by people asking me to help fix their computers. Usually it's “just slow” or “acting funny” which is what this guide intends to remedy. In my experience it has fixed 90% of the problems. Hope it works as good for you guys as it does for me. This is my (general) set of tasks designed, of course, for Windows:

1. Boot Into Safe Mode

Safe mode is just that, a safe mode. It has minimal startup applications, running just the basics. It helps to be in safe mode because this could, potentially, keep viruses from starting, and generally lessening their effects. To boot into safe mode, press F8 like a madman while your computer is turning on. You should get a prompt asking you what you want to do. Click “Safe Mode with Networking”

2. Malwarebytes'

Malwarebytes' is, in my opinion, one of the best cleaning programs out there. Simply go to their webpage and download it. Run the exe and you should get the installation prompt. If you don't or you get an error, then it is likely a virus blocking it from running. If that's the case then change the installer's name from “mbam-setup.exe” to something else, maintaining the exe file extension, and try again.

After it's installed it's time to run the scanner itself. Launch the program, and if the program starts, great, if not, it may be the same case as the installer. Go to the Malwarebytes directory and change the “mbam.exe” to something else, again, maintaing the exe file extension, and try again. The default install directory is "C:\Program Files\Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware", but it may be different for you.

Once the program is, hopefully, loaded you need to update it with the latest virus definitions. Go to the “Update” tab and click “Check for Updates”. After it's done it should tell you that it successfully updated. If you can't reach the server then you either don't have internet access or a virus is keeping it from updating.

Once it's updated, go back to the “Scanner” tab and select “Perform full scan” and click “Scan”. Quick scan is faster, but it doesn't perform a full system search. However, they will generally return the same results so it's really up to you.

Once the Scan has completed it will tell you and present you with what it found. Remove any infections and you're ready to continue to the next step.

3. Windows Updates

You'd be surprised by how many people don't ever update their machine. This leaves numerous security holes, and also keeps you from “enjoying” Microsoft's latest features. You can update windows through Internet Explorer on earlier versions of XP by going to Internet Explorer → Tools → Windows Update. You have to go through a series of pages, but Microsoft does a good job getting you through it. It's even easier on Vista and 7. Just go to Start → All Programs → Windows Update. Assuming your computer is virus free it should start normally. Click “Check for Updates” in the left sidebar and once that's complete you can install them. It will usually asks you to restart. Keep doings this until it it says there aren't any important updates left.

4. CCleaner

CCleaner is a crap cleaner. It cleans “junk” files. Any temp files, web cache, cookies, history etc WILL BE DELETED. So be careful. You can go into and set specific settings, but the default ones generally work out fine. Download it from their site and install like you would any other program, but watch out for it trying to ninja-install the Yahoo! toolbar. In reality though, if the person who uses this computer doesn't know what they're doing they probably already have it installed.

After it's installed, run it and make any modifications to the settings you want and click “Run Cleaner”. Give it a bit to complete. I've seen this delete upwards of two gigabytes on really bad machines. Once this is complete, you're on to the semi-final step.

5. Defrag

Fragmented files are essentially files that are broken into several pieces and put in places all around the hard drive. Defragging (or defragmenting) puts these pieces into one contiguous space which will reduce read times on that file. Personally, I suggest using Defraggler, however windows has one built in already. It can be found under Start → All Programs → Accessories → Disk Defragmenter. Once it's started, select the target drive (generally C:) and click “Defragment Disk”. Feel free to analyze it beforehand though to decide if you really need to do this. If your percent fragmentation is in single digits you really won't see a performance increase, and it's probably not even necessary to defrag it. This step will take a while to complete (hours depending on used space, fragmentations, etc) so go do something else. This is generally my last step in the process, so if you were going to run some other scan or cleaner, I'd do it before this.

6.Other Things

This is more geared toward people who have a much more solid understanding, but I would run Hijackthis or msconfig and remove suspicious or extraneous startup applications and services. BE CAREFUL though, as the majority of these are required for your machine to run properly. I've found this is really one of the best things to speed up a computer. There's plenty of articles around the web that can tell you how to do this.

Set up antivirus. If you got infected in the first place you're probably not running any antivirus, or if you are it's probably not up to date or performing regular scans. So set that up. If there isn't any antivirus I would suggest AVG since it's free and does a very good job. In the case that there are multiple antivirus programs installed, remove all but one. For all intensive purposes they will accomplish the same thing, and the more there are, the slower the computer is. This is generally one of the biggest speed killers I see. People think they have a virus, so they go install five different antivirus programs, all running in the background, slowing it down more so they go find more antivirus. Not only that, but there are plenty of viruses that pose as antivirus programs so people download them, which I see a lot of.

If you haven't already, install Firefox. If you're not going to do that then at least remove all those annoying toolbars in Internet Explorer.

7.Done (maybe)

If you were able to complete all of those tasks successfully you should have a pretty clean computer. However, this will only solve the SIMPLEST problems. If it's really “messed up” and you can't take care of it yourself, take it to someone who knows what they're doing. Be advised, any business/tech support will probably tell you to format it and start over. This is because it is almost always a solution to every software problem, however, it also gives you the work of reinstalling all your programs and losing data. There's plenty of places to search online for solutions. If you can't find the solution on google I would recommend asking the experts on computerforum. If any of you experts out there have any suggestions, comments or criticisms please post them on my blog. Hope this helps, good luck.