Computer Cleaning 101

Before you know it spring will be here and you will be shaking out the rugs, cleaning your windows and generally making your house all clean again – don’t forget your computer.

 Cleaning your computer on a regular basis can save you lots of time and money down the road.

 First off get your cleaning supplies ready 

 Here’s you’re recommended cleaning list and how to clean it.

 Keyboard and mouse – It is important that you keep your keyboard and mouse clean; this is how you communicate with your computer telling it your wishes and commands. Left unclean and with foreign matter can be like giving someone directions with a mouth full of food.  The best way to clean your keyboard is to turn off your computer, turn your keyboard upside down and shake it a little and then rest it on end, tilting it slightly so that whatever is inside can fall out as you give it a good spraying with the canned air.  Remember to keep your air can generally level; not tilting it, if you tilt the can the contents may come out in a liquid form.  You might be surprised at what flies out of your keyboard.  Now you can wipe your keyboard keys down with those wipes paying special attention to the keys that are heavily used, i.e., spacebar, Enter, and maybe, although I hope not, Alt, Ctrl, Del.  If you have an optical mouse you need only wipe it down.  If you have the mouse with the ball on the bottom you can unscrew the part around the ball, arrows on the plate holding the ball in show you which way to turn.  Wipe down the ball and blow out any dust that might have accumulated where the ball sets and put ball back and screw cover back on and then wipe the mouse down as you would an optical mouse.

 Inside CPU – Cleaning the inside of you computer can help increase airflow thereby keeping you computer running cooler and more efficiently.  Unplug all the cords from you’re your computer, making note of where they go, and remove the cover from your computer.  There are various methods for removing your cover depending on what model your computer is.  Some of the older models require removing some screws from the back of the case and sliding the cover off to the rear.  Many newer cases are screw-less, some merely require pushing a tab or pulling the front off, there are too many different ways to go into detail here, I suggest that you look at your computer manual for specific directions.  Once you have the cover off grab that can of air spray again and go hunting dust bunnies.  You’ll be surprised at the number and size of the bunnies here.  Pay particular attention to the case fans.  By spraying them and making them run with the flow of air from the can you can get most of the dust and foreign matter off of them.  Remember to be careful not to tilt the can when spraying on any parts here because you could damage your motherboard by getting any of the liquid on it.  After you’ve finished killing all the dust bunnies go ahead and replace your case.

 Case – Now that we’ve got the inside cleaned lets get the outside looking nice.  Start with that trusty air can by spraying any openings on the case.  This would include air vents on the front and back, the areas where floppy or zip disks are inserted, basically any place where foreign matter may enter your computer.  After you’ve spray any loose dusts away take a wipe or two and give the case a good once over.

 Screen   I remember my dad always took time to clean the car windshield before we went to the drive-in.  Cleaning your monitor serves the same purpose - who likes to look at a dirty screen?  Believe me, I don’t own any stock in any company that produces canned air but go ahead and give your screen some cool, fresh, canned air.  Most screens, even LCD screens, have ventilation holes on the back and rear; give these a cool blast to free any dust and/or foreign matter that may be lodge in any vents.  Next, with an anti-static wipe or two, depending on how “unclean” your monitor is, wipe your monitor screen to your satisfaction.  It is best to do this with your monitor off so that you can get a good look at how “unclean” it is, fingerprints, smudges and dust are hidden by glare and images on the screen when your computer is on. 

 Hard Drive   Now you can put away that canned air but you might want to roll up your sleeves because here is where the real work begins.  Cleaning up unused, temporary and obsolete files on your computer is a great way to free up space and generally make your computer a little healthier.  You can do this a few ways on your own or you can purchase a program designed to do this with a few clicks and some decision making on your part.  I have used a program called WinCleaner One Click, by Business Logic, which was review in the January 2003 edition of PC Alamode, and like it for its simplicity and for the fact that you don’t even have to install it on your hard drive; you can run it directly from the CD.  To clean up your hard drive without using any extra software you will need to run several different Windows applications.  You can start by cleaning up your email, which hard drive cleaning software will not clean, if you use programs such as Outlook, Outlook Express, and Eudora that store your email messages on your hard drive.  By simply deleting messages that you no longer need in your inbox or sent box you can free space and get rid of unneeded files. Don’t forget to empty your deleted folder/box.  When you delete messages from your inbox they go into the deleted box but they are still taking up space on your computer.  Next, click your Internet browser icon and clean out your temporary Internet files.  To do this in Internet Explore click on Tools, Internet Options and then Delete Files under Temporary Internet Files.  In Netscape go to the Edit menu and select Preferences then go to the Advanced category, select Cache, and click both the Clear Memory Cache and Clear Disk Cache buttons.  The rest of the hard drive cleaning is up to your personal discretion.  You can go through your word processing files, graphics and other files using Windows Explorer or My Computer and delete files you know are not needed.  Files with the following extensions are generally safe to delete:  *.bak; *.old; *.chk; *.000, and *.tmp

Now that you’ve created all that free space on your hard drive I recommend that you defrag your hard drive so that all the allocated space is together and all the free space is maximized.

 Accomplishing all the tasks that I’ve described on a regular basis should keep your computer in a healthy state – Happy computing.