Taking care of your hardware is extremely important, but maintaining your software is just as important in order to keep a computer running at top efficiency.

The best way to do this is to ensure that your computer has no unnecessary or harmful programs running in the background and that your software is up to date. Viruses and spyware products can be caught most of the time by an anti-virus program.

Make sure to run scans regularly, at least once a week. Depending on what program you have, the anti-virus program will alert you of any suspicious files or any problems and then present a few options to you for dealing with the issues.

In addition, remember to check for updates that are available from the program’s company. Macs do not come with anti-virus as Macs rarely have problems with viruses.

Sometimes spyware (programs installed onto your computer by Web sites without your knowledge) are not detected by an anti-virus program. A way to check what programs are running in the background is to press ‘ctrl’, ‘alt’, and ‘delete’ simultaneously and choose the “start task manager” option. Then choose the tab titled “processes.”

If there are any alien processes requiring large amounts of memory, it’s a good chance it’s spyware. Right click and choose “open file location” and then delete it.

Just as important is to make sure you keep your operating system (Windows, Leopard, Linux, etc.) up to date. This is extremely important because when an update is released, it reveals weakness in an operating system’s code and criminals often attempt to strike before a user gets around to downloading an update. Your computer should alert when an update is available. I strongly recommend you do this before you do anything else.

It’s also important to keep all your drivers updated. Drivers are the software that installs onto your computer to allow it to use all of its hardware and if these are out of date there is a small chance they will have problems.

To make sure your drivers are updated, go to your product’s company Web site. Click on an option describing “device driver” or “automatic update,” or something similar. Most sites have an automatic detection feature which will scan your computer for you and alert you of updates.

To maintain your hard drive you need to run a defragmentation program (essentially, the computer has to clean up its room) and back-up your files regularly.

These options will be found under “tools” or “administrative tools” under your “control panel” if you’re using Windows. If you’re using a Mac, a back-up program called “Time Machine” can be found under the “system preferences’ option. Macs require a third party program to run defragmentation.