by Mitz for Tips4PC.com
It’s essential to perform software maintenance on your computer after you’ve installed and removed more than a few programs. Most software maintenance is easy and will help your computer run faster and prevent crashes that could destroy valuable data.
What Is Software Maintenance?
Software maintenance is keeping the programs on your computer from interfering with each other. For example, an old version of a program might make it difficult for you to use a newer version of the same program even if you remove the older version.
In a worst case scenario, failing to perform software maintenance may force you to reinstall Windows and all of the other software you use. Although reinstalling Windows is easy on most computers, it does mean that you will need to find the original CD-ROMs and license keys for all of your software—and that can be a major hassle.
Software Maintenance Basics
The first step of basic software maintenance is removing unused programs. All unused programs take up disk space on your computer. That may not seem like a major issue when some new computers are shipping with a terrabyte or more of disk space, but today’s large programs are taking up more of your disk space than they ever did before—especially modern games which now often include gigabytes of 3-D imagery, music, and movie-quality scenes.
Unused programs can also automatically run small “helper” programs when your computer boots. Although many of these programs are unobtrusive, they all consume part of your valuable computer processor power (CPU), stealing it from applications you really do want to run faster.
This excerpt is shared with permission from tips4pc.com.
