The PC-Preventive Maintenance
We all know that our cars require periodic preventive maintenance. You know things like oil change, tire rotation, filters, etc.. Did you also know that your personal computer has many requirements in the form of preventive maintenance. You probably don’t. Well in this post we will outline a few items that you should think about concerning personal computers and general preventive maintenance. The key word here is preventative. We wish to prevent component failure due to thermal stresses-heat.
We break down computer preventive maintenance into two parts. The first part is the actual computer box itself. Let’s take a look at the computer box. Believe it or not, there are moving parts in the computer box. Mostly these take the form of fans, although we do have movement taking place with some disk drives. And of course the hard drive were more concerned with the fans in the system. The fans serve one purpose and one purpose only moving air around the inside of the box to help cool the components. What components are we talking about? Well for one, the processor itself usually has its own cooling fan. Number two, the power supply. It has a fan. If any of these fans stop functioning, we can have catastrophic results.Because of the nature of fans, that is moving air inside the box. They do bring in a lot of environmental contaminants, primarily dust. Over time this dust can literally buying the bearings in the fan causing a fan to malfunction. The malfunction can consist of usually two possible problems won the fan blade or slows down and eventually stops. Therefore, no air circulation and we get heat build up or to the fan stops in the case of a power supply and actually generates more heat. Therefore compounding the problem causing thermal stress on other components in the computer box.In order to minimize the impact that this dust can play your best tool is a small vacuum cleaner. Basically what you will do is powered down the computer and remove the power cord from the back of the computer. Using a small vacuum cleaner, attach the hose to the cleaner. So that you can suck out the dust and dirt from the grill face on the power supply behind the computer. This should be done periodically depending upon the environment. As for the processor it that will require that you remove a side panel or case cover to expose the CPU unit and its fan assembly. There you will carefully do the same procedure. A word of caution here try to avoid allowing the attachment of the vacuum cleaner to actually touch the fan or the components surrounding the fan. All we want to do is remove the visible dust and dirt that could potentially cut down on airflow, therefore allowing heat to generate heat is the computers worst enemy.
As to when this should be done, that really is in accordance with the environmental conditions, where the computer is situated. Generally speaking, if it’s a small room or office with a rug and foot traffic at least once a month or once every quarter.
This second part concerns itself with the peripheral devices attached to the computer box. Many of the modern computers today have a laser or optical mouse. So there’s no cleaning involved with the mouse . The keyboard however is another story. You can clean the keyboard with any good cleaning solution, but there is a caveat to that first began the computer is powered down in the power cord is removed from the back of the computer. Using a soft cloth take the cleaning agent, which would be a very dilute soap solution and spray gently sprayed the cleaning cloth with a solution so that the surface of the cloth is lightly dampened with this lightly dampened cloth. You then brush the top surface of the keyboard in between the rows of keys and the. You should also use your vacuum cleaner at this point to to remove any dust and dirt surrounding the keys. Do not spray the keyboard directly with the cleaning solution. You can get liquid down in the keyboard. This will possibly short out some circuitry, and you’ll be in the market for a new keyboard. This procedure is used as well to clean most of the modern flat-panel video displays. Again a word of caution. You do not spray directly onto the keyboard or onto the display. The cleaning solution, you can use would be any household dish cleaning detergent, two drops to about a quart of water is all you really need. You do not have to rinse anything off when you’re done. Just follow up with a dry cloth at the end of the procedure.
At least once a year, I disconnect all the cables removed the side panel of my computer. I then take the vacuum cleaner, reverse the hose on the vacuum cleaner so that now it is blowing out air. I take the computer outside and hook up the vacuum cleaner and gently using the end of the vacuum cleaner exhaust and blow out air and dust and dirt out, seems to work rather well but you have to be careful that you don’t loosen or disconnect any vital cables. You want to use a very small, thin jet. The material you can buy in a store called canned air or something of that nature is usually okay, but may or may not be environmentally sound and should be used sparingly.
Until next time….
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