You can save money, increase the performance of your computer, and extend the service life of your system, by regularly checking and keeping your system clean. This process is easy enough to complete yourself, and is well worth the short time it takes to complete.

Don't underestimate the benefits of this simple maintenance task, they are guaranteed to provide results. Here is why dust and dirt shorten the life and performance of your computer:

* Your PC is like a vacuum cleaner, it continually sucks air from one side, and exhausting it from the other

* Dust clings to surfaces within your computer as it passes through in the air

* Dust often turns into a thick greasy consistency due to moisture in the air

1. Dust reduces the life and performance of your Power Supply

• Dust will cause your power supply fans to fail sooner, and run slower
• Your power supply will run hot, causing your motherboard to reduce the speed of your CPU
• The expansion and contraction of components in your power supply is a major cause of failure

2. Dust reduces the life of your CPU, it's fan and components

• Dust builds up in your CPU heat sink and cooling fan
• As the heat builds up, your system tells your CPU to slow down and run cooler
• As with the power supply, the CPU fan is affected in the same manner
• The expansion and contraction form room temp to 80 or more Degrees cencius can have detrimental effects

3. Dust increases the internal operating temperature of your whole system

• See the two points above
• Dust increases the heat of your hard drive, another major cause of failure and data loss
• As dust clings to the case, it slowly blocks the vents that allow air in and out of your computer.
• As dust starts to build up, it becomes more easy for new dust to stick to the old dust. The circle of death!

What can be done to keep your computer clean?

Firstly you can contact us to perform maintenance on your computer for you. Or secondly, you can clean your system yourself. Follow the steps below to help increase the life and performance of your computer system. As always, if you are not confident in completing the maintenance, always use a professional technician for optimum safety.

1. Pick a clean, open area with no obstructions. Don't try to do this on the floor, especially with carpet. Even outdoors on a sturdy table can be beneficial

2. Unplug all the cables and connectors from your computer. Remember to take note of where they were plugged in if you are unsure

3. Sit the computer on the table or bench, and find the screws, latch or button that secures the main cover to your computer. Remove the cover and inspect the components and case for dust, dirt, and even possibly insects and bugs

4. Using the blowing function of a vacuum, your breath if it is strong enough (be careful to keep your breath dry), or best of all a can of compressed air, blow around the components of your computer at a distance of 10 - 20 centimetres. Pay special attention to the CPU, CPU heat sink, and any fans inside the computer. Don't forget around all the crevices and grooves. Dust is difficult to to find between some components like your optical drive (CD/DVD) and hard drive.

5. After cleaning the vents on the computer case, you can use a damp cloth to clean the outside of the computer case. Solvents and cleaners are not usually necessary, and are not advised unless you know how they may affect the materials your computer is made of.

6. Never use a cloth, damp or dry on internal components. Cloth can catch on sharp components and easily damage your system, and moisture or water, can corrode and damage components equally.

7. Re-assemble your computer and attach your cables and devices.

Often your computer can show the rewards of your cleaning, by operating faster, and sounding more quiet, as fans can operate at slower speeds to cool your computer as designed.

* It is always preferable to sit your computer on top of your desk, or on a shelf under your desk. Sitting your computer on the floor, particularly on a carpeted floor, will increase the dust and dirt passing through your computer, and make your computer more accessible to insects and bugs.

I hope this article has been beneficial to you.

 

Maintaining a healthy PC is vitally important, and taking a relatively small amount of time once and a while to clean your PC is a very worthwhile investment. Improving performance and reliability are two huge benefits, and you will almost always find noticeable improvments by performing some or all of the following steps. Where possible I will explain how to complete these steps without downloading software. There are many usefull software tools that can accomplish the following steps for you. So many in fact, it would be very difficult working through each piece of software with you. Feel free to google more information on the following steps, as this guide is most usefull as a guide to the basics. If you are unsure about performing any of the steps, just complete what you feel comfortable with.

1. Check and remove any unwanted or unused programs.

Once and a while go to the control panel in the start menu. Open up Add/Remove Programs and look for any software you no longer use, or no longer require. Removing this software will increase the free space on your hard drive, and quite possibly help your PC run faster and smoother by removing programs that may be taking up memory and resources without you even knowing it.

2. Remove Internet explorer tool bars and add-ons.

Often when you install new software, the installation will install additional things that you may not know, and in fact can slow down internet explorer and your web browsing experience. Particularly common are internet explorer toolbars such as google, yahoo, msn, and other. Most people don't actually use these, and they don't do you any performance favours. From within Internet Explorer, go to tools, then manage add ons. You can see which add ons you currently have enabled and disabled. It is fairly safe to disable almost all of these add ons. Two you will probably want to keep are Java and Flash, as these are required for many websites, including sites like YouTube!

3. Checking and limiting your startup programs and item.

When you start up Windows, many programs and items are most likely starting up in the background without you knowing it. Some of these things could be MSN, Google Desktop (Can really slow your PC) and other more needed ones like your Anti-Virus software. Windows has a built in tool called 'msconfig' than can be started by clicking on the start menu, and the run command. Then type 'msconfig' and press enter. Your goal here is to limit programs from starting up that don't really need to. Explaining msconfig to you here is a little more time consuming, so I would recomment googling for information on this tool, or go to netsquirrel.com who seem to have a nice guide on this in their how-to guides.

4. Make sure you scan for spyware and malware, not just virus's.

Often overlooked, but these days still very necessary, is scanning your PC for spyware. There are an overwhelming variety of software to do this, and unfortunately many programs that advertise themselves as anti-spyware, can easily be fooling you and be malicious software themselves. Two programs I do recommend and often use are 'Spybot S&D' and ' Malwarebytes Anti-Malware '. Links sometimes change, so do a quick google on these tools and you will find them quickly enough. These programs generally do not run automatically, so my advice would be to run these programs manually every couple of weeks, depending on your internet usage.

5. Deleting temporary and unnecessary from your system.

You system slowly fills up with temporary and downloaded files that really do slow things down. Especially Internet Explorer. There is an excellent free program called ' ccleaner ' AKA Crap Cleaner, that does a great job of cleaning things up for you. Once again a quick google for ccleaner will find download locations for it. This little gem of a program will likely clean up mach free space on your hard drive. It's like a breath of fresh air for your system.

6. Keep your Windows system up to date.

Don't ignore those little update messages you receieve in your task bar notification area. The bottom right corner of your screen where all the little icons are. Make sure you check Windows update regulary and if not already, turn on automatic updates from within Windows update. These updates help to ensure your system is kept safe, secure, and running well. Head over to Windows Update now!

7. Lastly, defrag your hard disk drive.

Once again there are many tools to do this, though the built in Windows tool 'Disk Defragmenter' works a treat, and you can find it right now in your start menu under accessories and system tools. Without going into fine details, files on your hard disk don't necessarily get written to the disk in a nice sequential way. In fact, the more full your hard drive becomes, the more fragmented, and slow to read, your files become. Disk Defragmenter re-writes all the fragmented files it can in a nice orderly and sequential way, which helps greatly in speeding up the time it takes for your system to read the files from the hard drive. Be prepared for this to take a long time in many cases, especially if you have not done this before. It can take hours, but it well worth it.

The end!