| Like other things we own computers need regular maintenance and cleaning. Dust will build up like the picture below. This dust buildup will cause your system to overheat and fail prematurely. The computer should be turned off when cleaning it. I use a 1 1/2 inch old paint brush and a vacuum cleaner. Using the brush that comes with most vacuum cleaners will cause static electricity. If there is a static discharge while cleaning there is a very strong possibility that your computer will be rendered useless. Holding the open end of the vacuum cleaner hose about an inch or two from the dust use the paintbrush to gently sweep the dust and dirt toward the hose. The keyboard also need cleaning. You can get a can of compressed air at just about any store that has computer stuff. Yes, even Wal Mart has it. Attach the nozzle hold the tip of the nozzle about half an inch from the keyboard and puff the air between the rows of keys.
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| Disk Cleanup is the first step of cleaning up your data on the hard drive. You should check all boxes. Use the scroll bar to make sure you check all the boxes. This will delete most of the unneeded files that are on your computer, and it will also compress old files that are still needed. A word of warning if you have owned your computer for over a year and this has never been done it will take a long time. I would start the process before dinner. Sometime after dinner there will be a prompt “are you sure you want to complete these items” Select Yes, it will take several hours to complete. It is not advisable to use the computer while this process is running. Running this process monthly helps to de-clutter your system helping it run at peak performance.
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| Just like the outside of the computer your hard drive needs cleaning also. The green system files never move they will always stay in the same place on your hard drive. The blue files are program files that are still connected to each other. The red files are defragmented or broken. These broken files require your computer to hunt through your hard drive to find all the pieces of a program to run. This slows down your system. The more red the slower programs take to load and run. Performing a Disk Defrag monthly is a key maintenance item to keep you system speed up. One key note to defragmenting your hard drive in to maintain at least 15 percent free space. The Disk Defragmenter program needs 15 percent to run correctly. Keeping large files like pictures on an external USB drive will free up space, so the program will run. Like the Disk Cleanup running this for the first time will take many hours. The Defrag will also fail if there is not the 15 percent free space.
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