INTRODUCTION - For years you've known about maintenance for your PC. You have anti-virus and anti-spyware software. You use a firewall. You're careful about where you surf the Internet. You don't open every Email attachment that you get - even from friends. You may run your maintenance utilities as scheduled jobs. You may even have a script to run your utilities. But, do you know the results? Do you have a log of the results? Particularly important to you, if you have a network of PCs, is whether you have a central log from which you can see the results of your maintenance. Let's look at what you might want to track, including anti-virus and anti-spyware data.

ANTI-VIRUS & ANTI-SPYWARE - For each of these, a log record to show that they were run can be helpful. Otherwise, how do you know when they were last run? How can you ensure that they are run at least once each week? How can you tell who ran the maintenance on a PC in case there is a question about a problem?

PERFORMANCE - If you have a log an objective measurement of the performance of your PC, you could compare other PCs to it to determine whether there might be a problem within a particular model of PC. You could tell whether the performance of a specific PC was deteriorating. You could use it to pro-actively determine, when the test time exceeded a parameter, that there might be malware on the PC.

IP ADDRESS - When you find a problem that exists on or comes from a PC, you may find the IP address and want to know where that PC is located. If you track the current IP address, you can find the PC in question from your log entries rather than making a visit to each PC in order to get the IP address.

DISK SPACE - In order to run disk defragmentation effectively, you need to have about 20% of the disk space available. If you log the amount of disk space remaining, you can be pro-active about efficient disk defragmentation and planning for upgrades of disk capacity.

DISK CLEANUP & DEFRAGMENTATION - Log the fact that these maintenance items were run. As simple as the tasks may be, they may give you clues to whether your PC is performing poorly because these elements of maintenance were not performed or whether there is a more serious problem.

SUMMARY - It is time to become pro-active about PC maintenance and to begin PC maintenance management. Rather than a passive process in which you run several maintenance tasks, track the results and observe them. A log can give you great clues to tell you about your PC and to help to protect it to avoid problems.

Copyright, 2006 by Tim Flynt. All rights reserved.

Tim Flynt has over 25 years dedicated to efficient application and utility systems. Experienced in higher education, entertainment, and software development organizations. Current interest in "PC Maintenance Management." http://AcceleratedOffice.com