Like your car, your PC needs regular maintenance too

Like your car, your PC needs regular maintenance too

By Zatni Arbi

JAKARTA (JP): If you happen to be using a HP DeskJet 850C, I
have both good news and bad news for you. First here's the bad
news: All four of the DeskJet 850Cs that we bought for my office
last year had to be repaired for exactly the same problem. The
rubber wheels of the pinch roller had split, and the printer
simply refused to pick up the paper.

The problem was not serious, but it was time-consuming because
the technicians had to tear the printer completely apart to get
to the paper pick-up mechanism at the bottom. I heard that the
problem was corrected in the latest DeskJet 870Cxi, although I
still have to confirm this with authorities of Hewlett-Packard,
some of whom I hope I'll be seeing next month.

The good news is that the HP Service Center on Jl. Tanah Abang
IV offers maintenance service. They fix the 850C problem in two
working days and as long as the printer is still under warranty
and you can show the warranty card, you will not be charged
anything.

HP has also just signed an agreement with its distributors and
dealers who will also offer similar service for any HP product in
various cities in the country.

Khoo Teng Liat, HP's Asia Pacific sales and marketing manager,
said that HP plans to have a drop-off site in Glodok, West
Jakarta, so people in the neighborhood could easily go there to
have their HP products repaired. This would save the long journey
to Tanah Abang.

HP's moves have been welcomed. It is hoped other foreign
investors, in IT industries as well as others, will follow the
same strategy in providing the ultimate service for their
customers. First, this would provide on-the-job training for a
lot of Indonesians, thereby assisting in our human resource
development. Second, more jobs would be available. Third,
computer users in small towns and islands other than Java would
no longer have to ship their equipment all the way to Jakarta or
Surabaya to get professional assistance. HP has promised that all
its Authorized Services Centers (ASCs) and dealer premier support
providers (DPSPs) throughout Indonesia will use genuine parts.

Maintenance

HP repair services aside, it must be remembered that your PC
also needs maintenance. Before your PC or any of its peripheral
breaks down, there are a few things that can be done to extend
its life or at least keep it in good working condition.

First, let's focus on the contents of your hard disk. You need
to keep them well-organized. At least once a year, for example, I
will copy all my important data files to a temporary storage
device and reformat the hard disks. The temporary storage device
I use may be a second hard disk, a Jaz drive, a SyQuest drive, or
even a second PC. I can back up the files using the familiar
XCOPY *.* /s command. LapLink and PCAnywhere are handy
alternatives for copying files from one computer to another.

Once the data files have been copied in the backup storage, I
will reformat the entire hard disk by destroying its contents,
including the records in the boot sectors. This is done to ensure
that all the viruses have been killed -- in case any of them
still manage to creep in despite the protection. I usually use
the DOS-based disk editor of PCTools or Norton Utilities.

By destroying the entire contents, the hard disk will be as
good as new. The next step is to install Windows 95, the software
drive for the hardware components, and all my application
programs. Then I restore the selected data files to their
appropriate subdirectories.

What is the benefit of reformatting your hard disks once a
year like I do? First, it gives you an opportunity to look into,
for instance, your C:My Document subdirectory and delete the
files you no longer need. Believe it or not, the majority of the
files in your hard disks are pure garbage and you can easily live
without them. By erasing them you'll retrieve the hard disk space
that these unwanted files have been occupying.

Second, if you like playing around with new programs and
regularly install them onto your hard disk like I do, you will
end up having tons of program codes that are equally useless.
Worse, several of these programs may slow down your computer and
not really boost your productivity.

Third, reinstalling your operating system and applications
will give you a sense of a fresh start. Even though the PC you're
using is the same old one, the new working environment will
inspire you out of boredom. Having newly installed software is
like living with a new year's resolution.

What do you need to have a fresh slate? First of all, you need
all the diskettes or CD-ROMs that contain the operating system
and application setup files. You also have to keep the patches
and fixes for them. You need the software drives for all the
peripherals that you have, including the drive for the graphics
card, the sound card, the printer and perhaps the scanner. The
Internet allows you to download and install the updated version
of these drives in your PC. Oh, don't forget the fonts collection
and anti-virus programs, too.

I wish to recall one terrible experience with fonts. Last
October, just when I was about to leave for a trip to West
Kalimantan, my PC refused to print. It was the worst time for
such a problem because I had to submit an urgent job before I
left for the airport. It turned out that I had installed far too
many fonts in the system, and the easiest way out of the problem
was to re-install everything from a clean slate. I never had any
problems since I did this.

Routine

Re-installing Windows 95 and all your applications will take
up at least an entire weekend, and therefore you may not want to
do this more than once a year. Luckily, to keep your hard disk in
good condition between total overhauls, Windows 95 comes with two
utilities that you have to run regularly. These are ScanDisk and
Disk Defragmenter. You should run these tools perhaps once in two
months -- depending on how much you use your PC.

The first program checks the health of your hard disk. It
checks for the integrity of the files, finds lost clusters and
even looks for already defective as well as potentially defective
sectors.

The second utility improves the performance of your hard disk
by placing bits and pieces of the same files close together, so
that the hard disk head doesn't have to dance around to read
them.

Both of these tools can be loaded by clicking on Start,
Programs, Accessories, and System Tools (see photo). While you
can definitely use third party tools, such as Norton Utilities,
to keep your hard disk in good health, Windows 95 tools are
perfectly capable of doing the job. Just remember to use them
regularly, much like remembering to change the oil in your car.