subject: 4 Ways to keep your PC cleaner [print this page] By: Sheldon Cooper By: Sheldon Cooper
Keeping your computer clean both inside and in your OS are extremely important to your computers health. Not only will keeping things clean maximize the life of your system, it will also make it easier to maintain. Take the following tips I have learned while building high end gaming computers and workstations as a guide to keeping your computer clean.
Dust free! Keeping your system free of dust is crucial to your computers lifespan. Dust causes interior components to clog and become less affective. For example if your systems heat sink(s) become clogged those components are unable to cool properly. This shortens the lifespan of those components by more than 50%. You also need to consider that keeping fans dust free will also make them quieter and last longer.
Desktop and I mean it! Desktops were meant to be just that, desktops. Putting your system on a floor will just cause it to become dusty faster. And putting the computer in a cubby or cabinet in your desk doesn't allow your computer to expel hot air rapidly enough. This can cause the system to overheat and shut down.
Startup follies. Many software installers will also set their programs as a startup program. This slows you boot times and reduces system performance. If you have installed any Adobe program make sure to run it and go into its preferences, updater. Make sure it is set to never update. This will keep adobe from automatically downloading and bugging you to install trivial updates. Also, after you install a program go to run in XP or use the start search bar in Vista and 7 and type MSCONFIG. This opens the console that allows you to make crucial OS adjustments. Click the startup tab and check to see if your newly installed software has created a startup service. If it has you can disable it here. If you are using a laptop you will have a set few startup programs that a crucial to run (i.e, track pad, wireless, keyboard etc). Make sure you leave these alone. If you encounter errors, you can always go back and re enable the program. This is particularly handy to disable programs that you rarely will use. For example I disable any Adobe, Messaging programs, and iTunes from running startups since I do not use them every time I use my computer.
Defrag and clean. Defragging your hard drive should be a common practice however windows does not do the best job at it. I personally prefer PerfectDisk. It defragments the disk much more effectively than Windows does. I also like to keep my system free of temporary files and old registry entries by using CCleaner. This program is great for taking care of system cleansing and registry errors. Remember when fixing registry errors always create a registry backup in case you run into any issues.
As you can see it is fairly easy to keep your system clean and running at its peak performance. These are all tactics I use on all of my gaming computers and workstations, and they truly work.
