Backup is the only maintenance task that needs to be done every day; the others can be spaced out a bit more or even put off indefinitely, without putting your system at any peril.

You may come up with your own schedule, but here's one possible schedule you could follow:

• Differential or Incremental Backup: Daily
• Full Backup: Weekly
• Disk Cleanup: Monthly
• Disk Defragmenter: Monthly
• Desktop Cleanup Wizard: Monthly

You also must decide when to do each maintenance task. An ideal time would be in the middle of the night or whenever you're not using the computer. But the catch, of course, is that if you're not using your computer, you're not available to start the utility, right? That's where the Task Scheduler comes in.

You should also run Check Disk at least every other week, but it cannot be scheduled with the Task Scheduler. You need to remember to run it or set yourself a reminder.

Windows Task Scheduler

The Windows XP Task Scheduler takes all the work out of remembering to run the various utilities at specified times. You set up a task to run, and the Task Scheduler takes care of it automatically.

The Task Scheduler does not complete the maintenance tasks automatically in most cases -- it only starts them. User intervention is usually required to complete them.

To see how it works, let's try scheduling Disk Cleanup to run every other week:

1. Select Start > All Programs > Accessories > System Tools > Scheduled Tasks. The Scheduled Tasks folder opens. (You can also open this folder from the Control Panel.)
2. Double-click Add Scheduled Task. The Scheduled Task Wizard opens.
3. Click Next.
4. Select the Disk Cleanup program from the list provided, and then click Next.
5. Click Monthly, and then click Next.
6. Select a date and time. For example, Figure 6-3 shows a task scheduled to run at 3:00 AM on the 5th day of every month. Click Next.

Figure 6-3: Schedule an exact date and time.

7. Enter the user name and password for the user to run this job. (Just enter your own Windows user name and password here. If you don't use a password, leave those checkboxes blank.) Click Next.
8. Click Finish. The Wizard ends, and a new icon appears in the Scheduled Tasks folder. You can edit that scheduled item anytime by double-clicking its icon there.
9. Now double-click the task's icon, and examine its properties. Notice that there are some additional properties here that you did not see in the Wizard. Make a mental note of them, and then click OK to close the dialog box.