COMPUTER CARE & MAINTENANCE

Protecting Your Computer From Damage Like any kind of equipment, your computer requires care and maintenance to run smoothly. A number of factors can cause damage to your computer’s hardware (the physical parts inside the computer) or media (storage devices like CD-ROMs and hard drives)

Protecting Your Computer From Damage Extreme heat, cold, or humidity A damaged cable will prevent the computer from communicating with input or output devices. Dust can damage hard drives and floppy disk drives and can prevent computers from cooling properly.

Protecting Your Computer From Damage As you know, computers require electricity to operate. As such, problems can arise when there are power outages and power irregularities (called power spikes or power surges). If the power goes out while a file is open, the computer will shut off and all changes to the file since the last time you saved will be lost. Power spikes are sudden surges of increased electricity that usually occur when the power comes back on after an outage. They can also be caused by atmospheric conditions (such as lightning) in buildings with poor or defective wiring. Power spikes can cause physical damage to many of the components of your computer, especially the hard drive.

Protecting Your Computer Computer Environment □ Place computers in temperature- controlled rooms. □ Keep computers away from air conditioning or heating vents. □ Keep computers in an area free of dust. □ Keep computers and media a safe distance from electrical or magnetic fields. □ Make sure cables are not kinked or twisted.□ Route cables so they will not be stepped on or rolled over by chairs.

Protecting Your Computer Power Spikes and Power Surges □ Connect all power wires in a way so that they cannot be accidentally disconnected. □ Connect the computer to a surge suppressor to help avoid damage from power spikes. Do not connect the computer directly to □ Employ a UPS (uninterruptible power supply) device that will keep computers running in the event of a power outage.

Keeping Your Computer Clean Poor maintenance is often the cause of many hardware problems. If a mouse becomes dirty, it will not track smoothly. When a keyboard is contaminated with food particles (usually caused when people eat at their desks) the keys become “sticky,” meaning they do not spring back up immediately after you press them. Dust particles (including paper dust) cause printers to jam and smear your printouts. Keeping these and other devices well maintained will make them work better and last longer.

Keeping Your Computer Clean There are several simple things you can do to help maintain your computer. Regularly clean the keyboard and mouse. Clean the printer of any dirt or dust to prevent jamming. Carefully remove any paper jams. Damaging the printer will make it jam more often and decrease print quality.

Keeping Your Computer Clean While there is a lot that you can do to your computer to keep it running smoothly, there are some maintenance activities that should only be performed by an experienced professional.

Keeping Your Computer Clean These include: Replacing or upgrading internal components of the computer. Repairing physical damage to peripheral equipment. Re-routing or adding electrical connections.

Maintaining Your Hard Drive If you do not regularly take the time to organize your desk, it will become harder and harder to find what you need. Just like your desktop, your hard disk will become cluttered if you do not take the time to organize it. Poorly organized files will lead to a decrease in the performance of your computer. It will take longer to locate the files you need. Keeping a clean and organized hard disk will result in better system performance. The easiest way to do this is to delete unused or temporary files regularly.

Maintaining Your Hard Drive A variety of utility programs are available to help keep your computer safe and running without errors. Some are supplied with the Windows operating system, others are available for free, and some are available for purchase.

Maintaining Your Hard Drive Defragmentation software like Diskeeper or the one supplied with the Windows operating system gather files into one area on the hard disk to make searching faster. Disk Compression programs like Virtual Drive and FarStone are designed to minimized the amount of space used by files on the computer. Disk Scanning programs like ScanDisk (supplied with the Windows operating system) check for and attempt to repair errors on the hard disk.

Maintaining Your Hard Drive Firewall software like ZoneAlarm and BlackICE keep others from accessing the computer through the Internet. Spyware Detectors like Spybot SP and BPS Spyware Detector check and remove spyware programs that send information from the computer to the Internet. Virus Detection software like Norton AntiVirus and McAfee VirusScan detect and remove potentially damaging viruses from the computer.

Maintaining Your Hard Drive Firewall software like ZoneAlarm and BlackICE keep others from accessing the computer through the Internet. Spyware Detectors like Spybot SP and BPS Spyware Detector check and remove spyware programs that send information from the computer to the Internet. Virus Detection software like Norton AntiVirus and McAfee VirusScan detect and remove potentially damaging viruses from the computer.

Excercise: Defragmenting Your Hard Drive

On the Windows taskbar, click start, then navigate to All Programs, then Accessories, then System Tools, and then click Disk Defragmenter. The Disk Defragmenter dialog window open. Use your mouse to select the C: drive (see Figure 3).

The Disk Defragmenter Window

Click Analyze. Once the analysis is complete, the Disk Defragmenter analysis dialog window opens and reports the current percent of defragmented files on your hard disk. Click Close, and then click Defragment on the main Disk Defragmenter dialog window.

Figure 4 Disk Defragmentation In Process

The Disk Defragmenter When defragmentation is complete, the Disk Defragmenter complete dialog window opens. Click Close. Close Disk Defragmenter.

Simple Maintenance Check your hard disk for bad sectors and error (Scandisk, then defragment) Remove unwanted and junk files Delete browsing history Clean out your Remove any programs that you do not use or have a trial period that has expired Keep up to date with Windows updates Don’t install too many programs Have an external drive for instant backup Keep your computer organized Guard your computer from viruses