What Is Your Daily, Weekly or Monthly Ritual To Keep Your PC Running Smoothly?

About the only thing extra that I run is CCleaner.

Besides that, I will manually remove leftover files from deleted programs every month or so, or when I get bored.

@ RWM - With your new build and SSD your going to have to give up Disk Defragmenting I use Diskeeper with Hyper Fast to keep my SSD's optimized it works with TRIM. http://www.condusiv.com/products/hyperfast/
 
TH
 

Good advice, as always, TH. Thanks.

I have WSA set for a Daily Deep scan.
MBAM Pro set for Quick scan Monday thru Saturday, Full scan on Sunday.
I run CCleaner at the end of the day.
Windows Defragmenter every other day.
 
Before going online for Banking or Government websites (Accounts I have with the Government) I'll do an extra WSA Deep Scan and a Hitman Pro scan, just to be safe.
 
 

Daily running WSA scans and CCleaner only. Nothing more. Looking at other posts here I should be ashamed, shouldn't I?  :$

@ wrote:
Daily running WSA scans and CCleaner only. Nothing more. Looking at other posts here I should be ashamed, shouldn't I?  :$

No more than me... that is about my routine too!

@DavidP wrote:

@ wrote:
Daily running WSA scans and CCleaner only. Nothing more. Looking at other posts here I should be ashamed, shouldn't I?  :$

No more than me... that is about my routine too!

Glad to know David that I am not alone 😃

@DavidP wrote:

@ wrote:
Daily running WSA scans and CCleaner only. Nothing more. Looking at other posts here I should be ashamed, shouldn't I?  :$

No more than me... that is about my routine too!

Actually, I think I'm guilty of overkill, but these WSA scans are so fast they hardly interfere with anything.  In fact, I rarely schedule scans anymore and  simply run them at my leisure.

@ wrote:

Actually, I think I'm guilty of overkill, but these WSA scans are so fast they hardly interfere with anything.  In fact, I rarely schedule scans anymore and  simply run them at my leisure.

It is certainly a new world of malware scanning isn't it?  I am used to the "have an hour or more available or better yet, start the scan when you go to bed and check results in the morning" kind of software.  :S

@DavidP wrote:

It is certainly a new world of malware scanning isn't it?  I am used to the "have an hour or more available or better yet, start the scan when you go to bed and check results in the morning" kind of software.  :S

Yes, it is.  The speed with which A/V and A/M software can now complete most scans seems to have improved dramatically … so much so that scanning no longer is the chore it once was.  WSA has done a great job in this area and if I, as a layman, recognize it, I would think that a lot of potential consumers recognize it, as well.

I am obsessive about assuring that my machine is running at peak performance all day long.  I do a lot of web surfing and word processing nearly every day.  Consequently, the possibility of my machine becoming gunked up and bogged down is high.  I have looked for a daily routine that gives me great performance and maximum protection without expending a lot of time doing it.
 
I have now arrived at what I consider to be a daily routine that gives me what I expect to accomplish.  Here’s what I do:
 
* I run WSA in the background all the time.
 
* I run WSA Clean Up Now numerous times, randomly, during the day.  It only takes little more than a minute each time.
 
* I run CCleaner numerous times, randomly, during the day, usually immediately after I run WSA Clean Up Now.  It, too, only takes a minute or so each time.
 
* I run Windows Disk Cleanup numerous times, randomly, during the day, after I’ve run WSA Clean Up Now or CCleaner.  This used to take several minutes.  However, since I run it after the other two programs, I’ve noticed they clear out essentially everything that Windows Disk Cleanup usually takes care of.  As a result, Windows Disk Cleanup only takes a minute or so.  In fact, I believe the other two programs have rendered Windows Disk Cleanup superfluous, redundant and unnecessary (I ran CCleaner, and in seconds it eliminated everything that Windows Disk Cleanup eliminates).
 
* I run Windows Disk Defragmenter once a day.  It takes about 15-20 minutes, so I run it when I’ve stepped away from my machine for a period of time.  It will bog down other functions on my machine while it’s running, so I only run it when I’m not using my computer.  Hopefully, if WSA integrates a defragmentation feature into its web console, it will work faster and more efficiently than Windows Disk Fragmenter does.
 
* I alternate between WSA Scan Now and Malwarebytes Quick Scan once a day.  Each of these scans takes about five minutes.
 
* I run Malwarebytes Full Scan once a week.  It takes a couple of hours, so I run it when I know I’ll be away from my machine for several hours.  I also schedule it to run once a week late at night when I’m not using my machine.
 
Time is at a premium with me, so I’m always striving to create a more efficient routine while assuring maximum protection.
 
What’s your routine?

I'm pretty sure you created a topic about this once before, so we'll merge them.

@ wrote:
I'm pretty sure you created a topic about this once before, so we'll merge them.

Could be.  I'm having trouble remembering what I had for breakfast, these days!  :(  (Yikes, they're practically identical.  I had completely forgotten about the prior thread!)

All Chrome links on my system link to Chrome Incognito mode. I have a RAMdisk mounted at the Chrome user data directory so all data gets shunted to it. This RAMdrive loads default data at every boot, and is not saved at shutdown. 
 
In Chrome I run Adblock Plus, Ghostery, and Click&Clean set to wipe everything at close of Chrome.
 
I run CCleaner periodically. That's it.
 
I create and run a host of virtual machines for running applications that I don't trust 100% and that don't need access to my desktop environment. Thus, my desktop/laptop runs Chrome, Office, and security applications and games and that's pretty much it. Everything else is partitioned away via virtual machines.

Explanoit, you are clearly light years ahead of me!   :S  At least we have CCleaner in common!  😃

=)
Here's the ultimate sandboxing OS:
http://qubes-os.org/trac
 

@ wrote:
=)
Here's the ultimate sandboxing OS:
http://qubes-os.org/trac
 

Sheesh!  You are way out of my league!  You use this program? 

My routine is not what it should be, and will make most of you cringe.  I am very good at advising others to make sure they run a full AV scan at least once a week, preferably daily, use something like CCleaner at the end of every internet browsing session or at least before shutting the computer down for the night, Scandisk and Defrag once a month, and more.
 
In reality what do I do?  I run a AV scan when the computer happens to be on at the scheduled scan time, CCleaner or Webroot's system cleaner once every couple weeks or so, Scandisk and Defrag I get around to about once every six months.  There is indeed a huge gap between advising others on what "Best Practices to be Followed" are and what I actually get accomplished on my own machine.  I really need to work on that!

@DavidP wrote:
My routine is not what it should be, and will make most of you cringe. 
 
There is indeed a huge gap between advising others on what "Best Practices to be Followed" are and what I actually get accomplished on my own machine.  I really need to work on that!

David, I was that way for a long time.  Two things changed:  (1) the proliferation of viral and malware attacks and, most important, (2) the ease with which you can run scans.  WSA Clean Up takes a little more than a minute and CCleaner takes seconds.  Even the viral and malware quick scans take only a few minutes.  They run in the background and do not interfere with other processes.  It has become effortless to run these scans, so you should do them regularly! :D   

I do keep a very close eye on computer performance and network activity.  When things are not acting quite right, I get the correct cleanup done.. but I do need to make it a bit more regular.  I do ALWAYS keep my AV up to date, and that scan does generally run once a week, but not daily as it should.

That is why I think a thread like this can be helpful.  For instance, I recently learned about CCleaner from Pegas, installed it, and think it's excellent.
 
However, it is unfortunate and frustrating that so few folks participate in these threads, and that includes WSA staff!  :@  They should be the primary motivators!
 
These types of threads, in order for them to be most effective, require more depth in terms of participation.  Undoubtedly, there are many members of staff at WSA that have huge knowledge.  They should become more visible.  Just my two cents.

Well I don't do much just make sure programs are updated run Disk Clean up and back up my important files weekly to a 1TB External Hard Drive I never do a full WSA scan as you don't need to because it's always watching your system and the default daily Deep Scan is enough I run SUPERAntispyware once a month and all it does is remove Tracking cookies which in reality are harmless at lease it makes a little more space and Diskeeper 2012 keeps my SSD's Optimized as you don't Defrag SSD's.
I use the word KISS "Keep it simple stupid" and that's it.
 
Daniel