It is important to schedule a monthly maintenance routine for all your systems. This will help you keep computers running smoothly, preventing issues, and ensuring their long-term reliability.

Depending on your situation this could include physical maintenance. If your computer's internal components have accumulated dust, consider opening the case (if applicable) and carefully cleaning the dust to prevent overheating and improve airflow.

It’s good practice to regularly check for firmware updates for the whole network infrastructure (router, firewall, switch, NAS).

Running monthly software maintenance on all your computers is particularly important for security.

First you need to check for manufacturer updates.

If you have Dell computers, you should install Dell Command Update or Dell SupportAssist to keep your computers up-to-date regarding driver updates and BIOS updates.

For HP computers, install HP support assistant, and for Lenovo, Lenovo Vantage.

Each manufacturer releases firmware or driver updates, quite often for security reasons.

During the monthly maintenance, you should manually execute the software provided by the manufacturer to check the status of your computers.

You should also check for software updates for all the software you are using, on each machine individually – for example browsers, Office programs, communication tools, utilities like Adobe Reader, Java, each of them is regularly updated, including for security reasons. Some tools exist to facilitate the task, such as Patch my PC Home Updater. Patch my PC builds an inventory of all software installed on the machine, and shows you which ones need to be updated. It can then install the update for you or you may run it manually. Miradore is also a good tool for patching.

Finally you obviously need to check system updates, either through Windows Updates or another tool such as Miradore. Leaving a system unpatched opens the door wide to hackers who can infiltrate your network. 

For laptop users, you may want to check that the Windows Firewall is on.

If your users have synchronization tools installed like Google Drive, Synology Drive, you may want to check that the synchronization is working properly.

When you are done, you may want to run disk optimization in Windows. 

To make sure you do not forget any computer, it’s good to run this monthly maintenance with your computer inventory and mark which one has been done.