Computer MaintenanceChelsea Hynes

Hardware Maintenance

Keyboard and mouse- you should clean your keyboard often, dirt, dust, hair, and food can accumulate, this can cause the keys to jam of malfunction. You can use compressed air to clean your keyboard.

A mouse with a ball can be difficult to move if the rollers are clogged. You should clean your mouse often to help eliminate jerky or erratic movement of the mouse pointer. To clean your mouse remove the bottom cover of the mouse.

Inkjet Printer/laser printer- After so much usage small deposits of dry ink accumulate in your printer this can clog the printer’s ink jets and affect the print quality of the document. Laser printers should be cleaned when the print quality deteriorates or when you change the cartridge.

Upgrades and Consumables

Computer memory- one way to measure the computers power is by it’s memory. RAM is made of small memory chips that form a memory module. These are installed in the RAM slots on the motherboard of your computer

Adding RAM to a computer generally helps increase performance , speed, and usability. Every system has a maximum amount of RAM that it can support.

Keyboards Ergonomic keyboards- Allow for a more natural positioning of your arms and hands. These have a smaller width, which keeps the mouse closer to you. This will reduce the reach and places the mouse in a more accessible position.

Wireless Keyboard- reduces the clutter of unwanted wires and other cable problems and improves mobility, If necessary you can move around with a wireless keyboard and not be bound to a desk.

Mouse

A variety of mouse devices are available, like wireless, optical, and combinations.

Touchpads are another pointing device you can use instead of a mouse. This devices sences the position of your finger and then moves the pointer accordingly. Most notebook computers contain touchpads, but these are also available for desktop computers.

Preventative Maintenance All computers slow down as you add and delete files, install and uninstall software, and perform normal activities. To eliminate these problems Microsoft comes with a set of utilities the perform special functions. You use theses tolls to defragment hard drives, empty recycle bin, delete temporary files, and remove cookies.

Disk defragmentation- When the computer is new the operating system, like Windows Vista, writes the file data in a set of side-by-side clusters. As the drive becomes clustered and space becomes limited, Windows divides the data for newly created files into sectors

Disk Fragmentation occurs when a piece of data is broken up into many pieces that are not stored close together.

Sectors are stored in blocks of nonadjacent clusters, creating fragmented files.

Seek time is one of the more time-consuming elements in a computers performance and can slow the speed of the processing cycle.

Recycle bin/ Cookies Recycle bin is a holding area for files and folders before their final deletion from a storage device.

A cookie is a small text file that a web site uses to identify a specific computer.

Temporary Files Various application programs, such as those in the Microsoft Office suite, create temporary files. This action is used for the following reasons:

To free memory for other programs

To act as a safety net to prevent data loss

For printing

Specialized MaintenanceGenerally, you can provide routine Maintenance . However you should not attempt some Maintenance procedures, here is a list of hardware maintenance or repair that generally should be performed by a computer professional

Replacing the power supply or opening the power supply case Replacing other electrical components Replacing the processor Replacing or adding a hard disk Replacing or adding additional RAM