Clean It Up: Easy Ways to Extend the Life of Your PC
Clean It Up: Easy Ways to Extend the Life of Your PC
Like your body, your house, and your car, your PC needs regular cleaning to keep it running smoothly. There might be dust bunnies choking its fans, junk files clogging the hard drive, maybe even stealth viruses slowing down the entire system. Fortunately, with a little maintenance of your hardware and software alike, you can restore your PC to its former trouble-free glory, and perhaps even squeeze a few extra years out of it.
Clean the dust
Clean the dust
Computers generate a lot of heat. Fans help dissipate all that heat, which would otherwise shorten the life of internal components and even cause system crashes. Unfortunately, as time goes by, those fans suck in a lot of dust and pet hair, which accumulates to the point where components don’t cool properly and the fans themselves get clogged--sometimes to the point of failure.
That’s why it’s essential to blow the dust out of your PC, and do so on a regular basis (at least every six months). If you have a desktop PC, turn the system off, remove the side panel, then use a can of compressed air to blow out all the dust. (You may want to do this outside.) Hit the fan blades with short bursts as well, making sure to get all the fans inside the system (including those inside the power supply and on your video card). Pay special attention to any heat sinks you see; they usually reside on the motherboard on your video card.
Laptops require a bit more surgery. After turning it off, remove the battery and unplug the AC adapter. Now flip the laptop over and look for an access panel that’s in close proximity to any air vent on an outer edge of the laptop. (Some laptops have multiple panels, others may have a single, very large one.)
Using a small screwdriver, unscrew that panel and remove it. You should see a fan somewhere underneath. Now it's time to blow out the dust with your can of compressed air (again, outside may be preferable). Hit the blades, the areas around the fan, the air vents, and anywhere else you see dust within the laptop’s guts.
After you've blown out all the dust, replace the access panel and battery, then power up the system. It should run quieter and cooler than it did before, and the added bonus is your components will last longer.
Clean out the junk
Every spring you clear out all the stuff that’s cluttering up your house, right? Your computer can get similarly cluttered with so-called “junk” files, which accumulate over time. These are temporary and/or superfluous files produced by Windows and various programs, and the more of them that pile up, the slower your PC will run.
Fortunately, a PC “spring cleaning” doesn’t require a mop, a broom, or even a trashcan. (Well, maybe a virtual one.) All you need is a utility designed to find and remove all that accumulated junk.
One popular option: Piriform’s CCleaner (which was originally known as “Crap Cleaner,” which should give you some idea as to its function). This free program, available for both Windows and Mac, scours your computer and Web browser for temporary files, form histories, and other potentially unnecessary stuff. On Windows machines it will also clean the Registry of old and unused entries. Run CCleaner every few months to keep your computer, well, clean!
Defrag your hard drive--if you have to
There’s another kind of “junk” that can accumulate on your PC: Tiny file fragments that get scattered across your hard drive over time. Years ago, it was important to run some sort of defragmentation utility (colloquially known as a “defragger”) to put your drive’s house in order, so to speak.
Today, things are a bit different. If your PC has Windows XP and a relatively small hard drive (320 gigabytes or less), a monthly defrag is still a good idea. You can do this using Windows’ built-in defragger: Open My Computer, right-click the icon for your hard drive, then click Properties. Switch to the Tools tab, click Defragment Now, then click Defragment to begin.
Newer PCs with larger hard drives don’t really need this kind of manual attention, especially considering that Windows Vista, Windows 7, and Windows 8 all have automated defraggers that run at scheduled times. That said, many users swear by pro-level utilities like Diskeeper, which promise to do a faster and more effective job than Windows’ own tools.
One caveat: If your PC has a solid-state drive (SSD), don’t defrag it. Doing so can actually shorten its lifespan, and the nature of SSD technology is such that there’s no benefit from defragging anyway.
Put some coolant on your CPU
Put a little amount of Coolant on your CPU with some time of intervals say 5-6 months. Coolant is use to reduce the temperature of your CPU.
To Start here are some steps :-
1) Open up your Cabinet box.
2) Open your Cpu`s fan (which is in your motherboard)
3) Put that jam like coolant on surface of your Cpu and then close it.
You can buy coolant at any local computer market Or can purchase From Ebay.
Clean It Up: Easy Ways to Extend the Life of Your PC
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