You brought a new laptop or a desktop PC when you open the packaging make sure you have all the necessary cabling and some batteries to power up any wireless keyboard and mouse

Be careful with your computer equipment if and if you’re not confident about setting it up get someone else to help you, most modern PCs are configured so you can easily get online just by plugging in a broadband ADSL modem or connecting to a Wi-Fi connection

Make sure the Windows  Firewall is turned on, if the firewall is not up and running Windows  will prompt you to turn it on

Keep your computer up to date this also means updating any software that you have installed on the computer e.g. Windows,  MS Office & many other software programmes also known as application software, Windows  updates are also recommended for the Windows operating system. You can also update drivers and this can be done through the manufacturers website and for those who have got a little bit more experience we also suggest that you look at upgrading the BIOS quite regularly as well

Aas a PC repair specialist we often see issues that are caused because drivers are not updated regularly this applies to mostly software drivers but can also reply to hardware drivers or the BIOS

Finally before you start adding anything else to your PC take a full system image this will come in handy if you do have a situation where your computer crashes It is easy enough to install the Windows  operating system but it’s copying or recovering your personal files that becomes an issue so we strongly suggest a backup of some sorts

Backup software options include cloud or backing up to a local storage drive we recommend that you use Google Drive, One Drive or in some cases the Apple version, iCloud. This means that all your files that are important to you, your photos documents videos music are safe

The advantage of this is that if when you come to replace your computer for whatever reason whether it be died or hard drivers crashed or you’re just upgrading because the computer is getting old it is a lot easier to do this when your files are in the cloud but do keep in mind when you do this that can create quite a large flow of data across your Internet connection