By Michelle Ng

It's important to provide your employees with systems that run quickly and smoothly and that aren't overloaded with old programs, obsolete files, or even private information from past employees. To add to this challenge, technology continues to improve almost daily, so the computer you bought last month might already be less powerful than a new machine released today.

Small businesses usually don't have the funds to buy a new computer with each new technological breakthrough, or for every time a new employee is brought on board. However, there are steps you can take to make your PCs run more efficiently for all of your employees.

Preparing PCs for Employees

There are a number of things that you can do for your new and existing employees when issuing them older computers. First, you should remove old programs, non-transferable software, email messages, contact information and text documents from the previous user. The Internet browser's cache, cookies, and history - along with the contents of the recycle or trash folder - should also be deleted. There are several 'clean up' software programs that can help you with these tasks.

If you need to completely clean or wipe the system, you may need to reinstall the operating system from scratch, which will require several hours of work installing operating systems, software programs, and any special items that your company might require. A faster method might be to re-image the system from a backup that had previously been made. This image usually is at a basic state, meaning that the image contains the operating system and all of the company-required software. This can usually be accomplished in a much shorter timeframe. The prerequisite, of course, is having this image already created.

General Maintenance Tips for Peak Performance

Regular maintenance can keep all of your PCs running smoothly throughout the year, so that it's not too difficult preparing one for a new user. Many experts recommend software that allows you to execute monthly checkups on your system (similar to regular maintenance for your car). Software will allow you to scan the hard drive for errors and fix any corrupt sectors, as well as remove invalid registry entries and broken short cuts.

It's also a good idea to perform regular checks on your employees' hardware to make sure the drivers are up-to-date, which can help hardware run better. Additionally, it helps to manage Windows settings, choosing settings that could help make computers run faster, such as creating shortcuts for frequently used files and adding programs to the start-up menu.

Maximizing performance and data protection

This might be a good time to review each computer's performance as well as how well it is protecting the data that will be stored on it. Benchmarking or performance testing is a good way to test employees' old computers against other computers on your small business network to see if they're up to par with your other systems.

There's also protection in the way of "un-doing" user error. There is software available that will allow you to bring your computers back to a point in time before a mistake was made. This would be particularly useful when new employees accidentally delete important information, or even in the event of a catastrophic computer failure. The software available allows you to easily restore the PC to a healthy state by going back minutes, hours, or even days (depending on available disk space). With these same programs, you can also restore files that have been accidentally deleted, lost or modified.

To maximize protection of your data, consider upgrading or adding software to help you in backing up your computer. System backup is important because small businesses continually store more and more valuable information on their networks. A solid backup solution is necessary to ensure that important company data is not lost.

Optimizing for faster processing

A final setup task is running a utility that optimizes your hard drive. Routine creation and deletion of large numbers of files can cause the hard drive to become fragmented. This fragmentation can degrade your system's performance when reading or writing, which can cause a marked slowdown in system performance.

Various software packages perform defragmentation of the hard drive so that the computer can retrieve information more efficiently. In fact, a defragmented disk can actually last longer because the wear and tear on the mechanical parts of the hard drive is reduced.

An ounce of prevention

The best way to keep your small business PCs running smoothly is to prevent problems before they occur. Prevention is two-fold. You need adequate virus protection, as well as a good backup program for each of the PCs on your small business network. Virus infections and hackers can cause just as many system problems as hardware failures.

Unfortunately, a lot of the new viruses can override or even reformat files on your hard drive. Hackers who break into your PC can wreak havoc on your system - and, even worse, steal personal information stored on your employees' computers. Small businesses can mitigate these threats by installing antivirus software and a personal firewall to stop hackers.

Various software programs, such as Norton SystemWorks 2005 Premier can help small business owners and IT managers take these steps to reduce downtime and expenses associated with system crashes, while also keeping systems running smoothly for both new and old employees.

Michelle Ng is a product manager at Symantec Corp.

ITworld.com

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