With spring in the air, now is a good time to do an annual clean up of the computers, servers and electronic equipment, both inside and out.
Failure to thoroughly clean your computer at least once or twice a year will result in decreased performance and possibly even system failures.
Here’s why:
- Dust clogs the computer’s cooling system causing it to heat up, damaging sensitive electronic equipment. Dust can also cause fan noise and (believe it or not) slow performance!
- Crumbs and dirt in your keyboard can cause keys to stick and crunchy sounds when typing. Plus, it’s just gross and unhealthy; do you know there are more germs on your computer keyboard than the average public toilet?
- Dust, fingerprints and dirt build-up will make your computer monitor dim and fuzzy.
But the physical “dirt” is only the beginning...
- Delete temporary files and unused programs taking up space and slowing things down.
- Defrag your hard drive (Start > All Programs > Accessories > System Tools > Disk Defragmenter).
- Get rid of clutter on your desktop by removing shortcuts and files you don’t need.
- Make sure you have the latest security patches and updates installed and configured properly.
- Check your backups and conduct an emergency “restore” of the data. Remember, the best time to check your backups is when you DON’T desperately need to recover your data!