How to share a family PC without going crazy - Part 5: Regular maintenance of your family PC

By Ed Tittel

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There’s more to managing a family PC than simply establishing rules and guidelines, then setting family members loose. Somebody actually has to keep track of what’s going on, and not only keep things neat, tidy, and up-to-date, but also play the enforcer as and when circumstances dictate, as they sometimes will. That’s why we offer a calendar of regular, periodic activities stated in terms of frequency, that the appointed administrator (and any delegated minions) should undertake to accomplish as indicated:

Daily: Make sure automatic updates are turned on for the operating system (and use Microsoft Update, if possible) and for any and all security software that’s installed and active on the PC. This will keep critical vulnerabilities as patched as possible, and help limit exposure to malware or hack attacks.

Weekly: You’ll want to back your system up no less frequently than once a week to make sure copies of important homework, family documents, and media files are tucked away somewhere in case the PC experiences a hardware or software hiccup. Your best bet is to buy an external USB or Firewire hard disk that’s the same size as the primary drive (or drives) in your family PC, if not bigger. In a pinch, the built-in Windows backup program ntbackup.exe will do for backups and restores, but if you buy an external hard disk, many of them come with pre-installed backup programs that may be more capable that you can use instead. You should also visit the Microsoft Update or Windows Update sites weekly, to check for optional updates that don’t get installed automatically that you might want to initiate manually instead (read the verbiage that accompanies these items to help you decide if an update applies to your machine). Visit security software Web sites to see if your automatic updates have missed anything (or if any subscriptions have lapsed) in the last week as well.

Monthly: This is when you’ll go on disk patrol to see how space consumption is looking, and how close individual family members are getting to their individual space allocations. You can ferret out the biggest and oldest files and burn them to a CD-ROM or a DVD, then delete them from the hard disk as detritus piles up on your hard drives (and remember, you’ve also got backups in case anybody gets too excited when something goes away). It’s probably a good idea to make a “hit list” one weekend of what you plan to burn and destroy the next weekend, to give family members some time to protest, suggest alternatives, or perform their own clean-ups before you do it for them. You can automate some of these tasks and we show you how in this short video tutorial here.

Once a month is also a good time to run a security scan against your family PC to make sure your collection of security software and settings are still capable of fending off the ravening hordes from the Internet. Gibson Research (particularly its ShieldsUP! test battery) and SecuritySpace both offer good, free, basic security audits or scans you can use to make sure you don’t need to adjust your family PC’s security posture in the wake of newly discovered threats, vulnerabilities, or exposures.
Once a month is a great frequency for system clean-up as well, if you’re inclined to keep your system in tip-top shape. The easiest way to do this is to acquire a good system tune-up/clean-up tool suite such as Vcom’s Fix-It Utilities or Iolo’s System Mechanic and let them take care of your file system clutter, compact and back up your Registry, and handle other regular system maintenance and clean-up tasks (expect to pay $40 to $50 for such a tool set, and consider it money well spent).

Quarterly: This is when it’s time to check your system’s hardware drivers and related software elements. Services such as DriverGuide (fee-based for best service) or PCPitstop (free and fee-based versions) offer Web-based driver scans that you can use to identify which drivers on your system, if any, might need updating (before you start replacing drivers, it’s always a good idea to make a full system backup, so this activity is best pursued immediately following your regularly scheduled backup).
If circumstances don’t force you to act more quickly, once per quarter is also a good time to check for major application upgrades and to acquire and install same if the family decides that’s a good move (you don’t always need to act right away, though, and you might decide to let available funds and time dictate exactly when upgrades or outright replacements should take place). If you’re planning to install any new hardware (a faster graphics card, more RAM or storage, or whatever), this is probably also a good time to make such things happen as well.