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.