Do you do "Regular Maintenance"?

[HumbleCoder]

I post on a couple of more general forums that have "tech help sections" that I generally like to look in. One thing I have noticed is the high correlation between people who have problems and those that claim you should do regular maintenance like weekly AV scans, defrags, chkdsk, CCleaner, registry cleaners, etc.

Personally I spend 50 - 70 hours a week behind a PC screen and don't do any of that stuff and have never had a problem. I actually think it's a load of nonsense.

What are your experiences?

 

[SiriusB]

Simple maintenance such as getting rid of malware, uninstalling applications, deleting old files and defragmenting your HDD are all important and have tangible gains.

From my own experiences, the people who have issues are the ones who blindly follow bad advice. Most of the computers I fix for people have multiple AVs installed, usually some kind of bull**** registry optimizer and reams of crappy spyware-riddled "utilities".

Personally, I run AV and AM software at least once a week. I use CCleaner to get rid of junk files a couple times a week [it is surprising how much it can get rid of - and since I do full disk images daily, always nice to get rid of as much as possible!]

I also use WinDirStat now and then to see if I have any giant files lurking - I am always misplacing an ISO or two

 

[marc2003]

i run ccleaner every few days to clear my temp files but that's about it.

 

[jbloggs]

I run CCleaner at the end of each day, along with updating antivirus definitions and every few days to a week update SpywareBlaster and Malwarebytes, don't defrag as I use SSDs for booting from, although do periodically do defrag WHS box and music file server which do have mechanical HDDs.

Recently cleaned up my cousin's old desktop, which took IE8 an age to open, installed and ran CCleaner, uninstalled McAfee Security suite and installed Avast antivirus and turned on XP firewall, uninstalled all useless/unused programs, removed quite a few entries from the Startup list, installed Chrome, checked Windows XP Update (although it appeared up too date) and finally did a defrag and she was amazed what a difference it made, everything was so much faster for her...

A bit of regular maintenance does make a great deal of difference in the long run...

 

[HumbleCoder]

Interesting, I don't see the need for AV scans because it's resident in memory and Windows has a scheduled task to defrag that runs every week. Every now and then I'll uninstall stuff I don't need but as a rule I don't install a lot.

I never bought into the CCleaner religion but must admit I ran it other day for the first time and it reclaimed 5GB of space. But TBH I find it annoying that by default it wants to clean out stuff like internet history and cache because I actually use them and like that to hang around. Even if it does run into the 100MBs hard drives are cheap and it's convenient.



I just don't see the need to set time aside and do this stuff.

 

[this_is_gav]

I do a chkdsk every few months on my PCs and servers (at work), but other than that, only when I experience an unexpected shutdown (such as in a power failure).

I don't bother with either scheduled or manual defrags or anti-virus/malware scans.

Certainly registry cleaners do more damage for zero gain in my experience. Barge polls come to mind.

 

[j.col]

i run ccleaner every couple of days.
malwarebytes scan every weekend.
and i use a proper uninstaller,
and defrag if needed once a month

 

[SiriusB]

Interesting, I don't see the need for AV scans because it's resident in memory

Not sure what you mean by this.

I never bought into the CCleaner religion but must admit I ran it other day for the first time and it reclaimed 5GB of space. But TBH I find it annoying that by default it wants to clean out stuff like internet history and cache because I actually use them and like that to hang around. Even if it does run into the 100MBs hard drives are cheap and it's convenient.

Then uncheck those options... It remembers your selections so its 10 seconds of your life to configure.

I just don't see the need to set time aside and do this stuff.

What time?

Antivirus and antimalware can usually be scheduled. Defrags can be scheduled. CCleaner takes about 30 seconds.

I can do the manual weekly maintenance tasks in about 5 minutes.

 

[pooley]

i scan with malwarebytes and kaspersky and use ccleaner. i run windows diskcleanup and defrag occasionally.

 

[HumbleCoder]

Not sure what you mean by this.

AV is permanently in memory scanning. If you have to wait for signature updates then scan to catch a virus then your AV has failed and the damage is done, imo.

Moreover, strictly IMO, AV is a very flawed concept whether it be pattern matching or heuristics I think it's more piece of mind than actual protection. For example I work on a product that intercepts all registry and file read/writes and redirects to a cache that is then sent out over the network to another machine. It also decompiles segments of code on the fly to reorganise hooks to make sure we get in before Citirx, VM (basically inside any virtualised bubble). Yes the code is signed, but that doesn't mean anything. There is very few legitimate reasons any app would need to do this and it's behaviour could very well be seen as malicious. How many times do you think we've been flagged by AV? .....Never.

I really think it buys you nothing but a false sense of security.

 

[theheyes]

AV isn't a cure all, but it's not snake oil either and does have it's uses.

The biggest maintenance job for me are Windows updates. A distant second is uninstalling things I don't use anymore. That's about it really.

 

[Mp4]

Theheyes - your sig always makes me lol every time i see it



Nod32 - Scan every week or if it detects something then do a scan right away.
Malwarebytes (check to see if any updates are free every 2 days and do a scan at the same time)
Use ccleaner to do all the cleaning
I've not defrag for a while

 

[Trifid]

No. I prefer to not install rubbish, especially programs that need to have startup services.

 

[Will_3rd]

Run CCleaner now again and Defraggler almost everyday.

Also check for Spyware with Spybot every week.

Have NOD32 running in the background too at all times.

 

[Greenlizard0]

Have KIS running in the background that updates automatically.

I have Ccleaner too, however I only use it when uninstalling/installing something. Otherwise I won't bother, I don't really notice that big a performance loss in Win 7 64 and an SSD.