A Pain in the Whatchamacallit
By Tiny Ruisch
It’s that time of year again. Time to do that spring cleaning. Luckily, I don’t have either a garage or an attic, so you would assume there is no need for me to do any of that mundane cleansing stuff. What I have to spring clean every year is the closet in my computer room where all of my excess electronic stuff ends up. Just last month a lot of people told me “thank you” for bringing in something for the give away table that they could really use. I’ll have to tell the truth. I wasn’t really spring cleaning. My wife had the house re‑carpeted and I had to move all of that stuff out. It was easier to put it in the pickup than back in the closet.
Talking about spring cleaning, this is a good time to do some computer cleaning. If you’ve got a desktop computer, it is a good idea to shut it down, unplug the power cord, open the case and blow out all of those dust bunnies that have accumulated inside. A can of compressed air doesn’t cost much. Make sure you blow out all of the ventilation ducts and in the corners and underneath all of the components. This is also a good time to check that all of your power cables, memory chips, etc. are firmly seated. Over time they sometimes wiggle loose and cause aggravating problems.
Your keyboard can also probably use a good cleaning. Disconnect it, turn it over and give it a good shake to get rid of the accumulated crumbs and other gunk. You could also vacuum it with a brush attachment. A squirt or two of your canned air will also help. If you haven’t got rid of all the keyboard muck, a cotton swab dipped in isopropyl alcohol can be rubbed between the keys to clean them. Just make sure that the swabs aren’t dripping wet.
Next, it’s time to clean your monitor(s). Use your compressed air to blow the dust out of the corners. You’ve probably got a few dust bunnies over or under the stand as well. You can make a screen cleaner from several recipes found on the internet. Personally, I spend a few dollars and buy one of the commercial products. Either way, don’t directly spray the screen. Just moisten a micro-fiber cloth and then rub the screen clean. Wipe it dry with another cloth.
Now that you’ve got a sparkling computer, it is a good time to clean your hard drive(s). Download a copy of Belarc Advisor. The Advisor is a program that scans all the hardware and software on your PC. One of the sections in the report lists all of the software installed on your machine. It also tells you the version number, date installed, usage data and much more. Look at the section that tells you when you last opened each program. I’ll bet you find some that haven’t been used in more than a year. Might be good time to get rid of them and free some space on your hard drive.
Cleaning those old programs off of your hard drive is easily done with Revo Uninstaller. Revo uses the Windows operating system uninstaller to remove the program. Then it checks your hard drive and registry for leftover remnants and deletes them.
After deleting all of those programs, your recycle bin is probably getting pretty full. With CCleaner you can easily do that At the same time you should delete old log files and old temporary files. As an added bonus, you can clean all of your browsers temporary files, history, cookies, download history, etc.
Now that you’ve got a clean house, a sparkling garage, a spotless attic and a smooth running, junk-less computer, you’ve got time to have a cold beverage. Maybe you could even play some clean games.
Thanks for reading.