Vista Meter

One of Microsoft’s big claims for Vista is that it’s the most stable and secure version of Windows yet. And while that may be true, you’ll still need to exercise a little care and attention if you want to help prolong the life of your PC and keep it running as quickly and as smoothly as it did when you first switched it on.

Thankfully, there are dozens of built –in maintenance, system and security tools in Vista that can help keep things ticking over nicely as well as diagnose problems. All you need is a little knowledge about what to use and how o use it. In this article I’ll be introducing some of the utilities you should familiarise yourself with.

Regular Maintenance Tasks

You will have probably paid a lot of money for your Vista PC so it is in your best interests to look after it. You’ll be pleased to hear that you don’t need to be a computer boffin to keep it in tip-top shape – just bear in mind that Vista works on the premise that prevention is better than cure.

As such, you’ll need to schedule regular and ongoing maintenance tasks if you want to keep your PC on top form. The good news is that many of these can be automated, so you don’t even need to think about them.

The part of your PC that gets the most wear is the hard disk, which is why many of Vista’s system and maintenance features are geared towards looking after it. You should regularly tidy your system disk up, remove unnecessary files, reorganise the way the data is stored on it and check the disk for physical errors.

Health Check

Sometimes it is a good idea to generate a system health report. This will display a list of problems that might be affecting your system, for example high usage of system resources such as processor, memory, or disk space.

You can run a system health check to gather information about hardware and software configuration, network, disk, memory, and processor data and generate a report. To do so, go to Start > Control Panel > System and Maintenance. Here you will find a number of tools. To run the health check, click Performance Information and tools. Then click Advanced tools on the left side of the screen. Select the last item – ‘Generate a system health report’ – to open the Reliability and Performance Monitor.

Vista also has a number of other built-in health checks, such as the Memory Diagnostics tool. Type ‘Memory Diagnostics’ into the Search box in the Start menu and hit Enter to launch the tool. You’ll need to restart your PC to run it, though. Type Reliability and Performance into the Search box in the Start menu, meanwhile, and you’ll be able to open a utility that provides real-time monitoring of your system resources.

One quick and easy way to keep an eye on your computer’s performance is to add the CPU and Memory Gadget to your desktop Sidebar. Right-click in the Sidebar and select Add Gadgets. In the window that appears, double-click the CPU Meter – it looks a little like an old-fashioned speedometer. With this on your desktop you can monitor your system resources and how they react in certain conditions. The small meter on the right shows you how much of your system memory is being used up. The larger left-hand meter shows the CPU power.
Stay Safe

The other obvious area of system upkeep that you’ll need to keep an eye on is security. Again, prevention is Vista’s key. One of Vista’s newest security features is User Account Control (UAC), which is a warning window that freezes your PC and pops up whenever you’re about to make anything that Vista considers to be a major system change.

UAC can be a bit annoying if you’re tweaking lots of settings, and you can turn it off (under User Accounts in Control Panel), but it’s worth leaving it on, since it can protect your PC from not just an accidental slip of the mouse, but also from a malicious software attack attempting to access your system.

Windows Security Center is your main port of call for security updates, system scans and other safety measures. In conjunction with security features built into other areas of Vista (such as the Phishing filter in Internet Explorer and the junk email tool in Windows Mail) you can easily keep your PC free from most ills.

Vista doesn’t, however, have a built-in anti-virus program. Instead, you’ll need to add third-party virus protection. All the major vendors (such as Norton, F-Secure, Kaspersky and McAfee) produce Vista-compatible anti-virus products, though one of these will set you back $50 or more. Alternatively, you could opt for AVG Antivirus, which is free and can be found at http://free.avg.com.

You may also like to consider a new security device that has just been launched – the Gatekeeper Pico from Yoggie Security. This USB appliance (www.yoggie.com) costs $149 plus $38 for FedEx International shipping. As well as screening and cleaning internet traffic before it enters the PC, it also frees up memory because all security apllications are loaded and updated on the Pico itself.
Keep A Backup

As well as looking after your computer, you’ll need to take care of the data you store on it. These days we entrust many important items to out computer’s hard drives; photos, videos, music – not to mention all our documents, calendar and contacts information.
Naturally, we all hope that our computers live long and healthy lives, but disaster could strike at any moment – thanks to random mechanical failure, virus infection or theft – and, while it may be possible to recover or replace the computer itself, it’s not always possible to retrieve all the files you kept on it.

This is why backup is important. Vista has built-in backup features but whichever method you use to back up files, I recommend saving your backups to a removable storage medium that can be kept away from the PC itself, such as blank DVDs or an external hard disk.