Technology Tips – Published May 2020 in the Guide and Digest
By Don Trauger – Kennett
Give Your Windows 10 PC a Health Check
In these trying times it’s important to keep your computer in good working condition. You may never know when it might be needed to provide vital support for you.
Before proceeding with the following information close all open windows and programs.
The first attempt to revive a balky computer is to do a Restart, not a Shutdown. Click the white 4 pane Windows icon at the lower left corner of the screen then click the “Power” icon just above that icon then click “Restart”. This operation will refresh the memory in the computer and may fix the problem you were experiencing. In fact you should do this every few days or so to remove unneeded bits of memory that are not being released and no longer serve any purpose. After a Restart wait a few minutes for the computer to initialize then shut it down if you are done.
Windows 10 can provide many diagnostic tools to check the health of your computer. Type “windows security” (no quotes) in the “Type here to search” box. At the top of the pop-up window click on “Windows Security”. You should see green checks on all the icons except for “Device Performance & Health” and “Family Options”. Click “Device Performance & Health”. Under “Health Report” you should see about 3 or 4 items and they should have green checks. If an item has a yellow triangle mark, click it to learn more. Further down the page you can watch a short video on this subject by clicking “Learn more about Device performance & health”.
Another good tool is “Reliability History”. It scores your computer on a scale from 1 to 10 with 10 being the best score. Type “reliability history” in the “Type here to search” box and click it at the top of the page. You can view technical details under the “Action” column for any days that have red or yellow indications of problems. The more days that have problems, the lower the score as shown by the graph line at the top.
Windows 10 also has 23 fix-it tools to correct specific problems. Type “control panel” in the “Type here to search” box then click it at the top of the window. In the next window you will see various categories. In the upper right portion of the window look for “View by:” and click the little down arrow to select the view “Large icons”. Next click “Troubleshooting”. Select the main category rather than the sub categories that most closely relates to your problem. All 23 fix-it tools can be viewed by clicking “View all” at the upper left in the main Troubleshooting window.
Other tools that can be invoked are commands to check and repair corrupted files and Windows system problems. Right click the Windows 4 pane icon then click either Windows PowerShell (Admin) or Command Prompt (Admin). Type “chkdsk c: /f” (No quotes) and press the Enter key. Answer with a “Y” press Enter and restart the computer. A “/r” instead of “/f” provides a more in depth check of the drive. Another command to use is “sfc /scannow” to repair Windows system issues. If the sfc command fails to fix all of the issues use the following command: “DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth” (no quotes).
All of these tools are safe to run so you won’t damage your system. The last 2 commands can be very effective in the event the previous information didn’t work. I’ll cover this information at our May PC Club meeting if the Community Center has been opened. We meet on the 3rd Tuesday at 7 PM.