Windows Simplified

Arguably the most important part of maintaining any Windows machine is to perform Windows Updates. Microsoft is always developing new updates for their supported operating systems. These updates will ensure your system can use any newly developed technologies and features, as well as keeping your system secure from threats.

Windows feature updates occur usually twice per year. These updates are usually quite large and may take a while to install. Security updates are usually released on the second Tuesday of every month. These updates are usually fairly small and quick to install. These updates will try to install themselves automatically while you are not actively using your system.

To check or install a windows update, you can go to the Windows settings. This is the cog icon that can be found in the start menu (Press the Windows key if you cannot find it). Then select 'Update & Security'. From here you can look for, download or install updates. You can also choose to download optional updates or change some settings such as setting up a time for Windows to automatically perform the update. Check out the video tutorial for more information.

The Windows task manager is a very powerful tool that allows you to view what processes are running on your system, and end them at the click of a button. You can also view system performance, app history and a list of services or startup tasks. It can be opened using a keyboard shortcut or by entering taskmgr.exe in the run prompt. By default it will open a simplified view where it lists your running apps that you can close. Clicking on 'More details' at the bottom left will switch it to the advanced view. This will show all apps and background processes running, as well as showing how much of your system resources are being used by each one. Stopping non-essential apps that take up a lot of 1 or more of your system resources can result in a faster running system.

The startup tab can be found along the top of the task manager. This tab shows a list of things that can run every time your system boots up. It also shows whether they are enabled and can keep track of how much time that adds to your boot up. You can also enable or disable them from this tab. Disabling some less important things can help speed up your boot times.

This is something you may hear a lot, but why do it? Isn't saving often enough? Unfortunately no matter how well you maintain your system, there will come a point where it starts to fail. If your hard drive is the part that fails then you can potentially lose all of the data contained on it, no matter how many saves you did. Because of this it is recommended to have at least 1 backup location. This can be either another drive or you can use cloud storage to access these files from anywhere in the world at any point. For cloud backup there are a few options, some of which come with software that allow certain folders to automatically sync and backup to the cloud. We would recommend that you keep sensitive or confidential stuff on a physical drive for extra security.