“An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure” is a bit of a cliché, but it’s also true especially when it comes to your computer system. Spending a few minutes a week on preventive maintenance can save you from costly computer problems in the future and not only keeps it running smooth and efficiently, but can also extend the usable life of its components.
Having a computer is supposed to be fun, so don’t let its size or complexity take the fun out of your experience. Make your PC work for you. To make this chore a little easier, I’ve included few techniques to help you keep your pc running smoothly. You should use these techniques to keep your pc in mint condition as part of your regular maintenance routine-or if you experience specific problems with your pc.
Properly clean your PC – The inside of your computer can gather massive amounts of dust. This decreases the airflow and increases the amount of heat inside your case, which can damage expensive components. Purchase a couple of Air Dusters and remove the dust regularly.
Save your work often – To avoid any data loss, you should save your work often. You can learn short keys of applications to do them quickly. Commonly, Ctrl + S is used in most applications such as Notepad, Word, Excel, Power Point, Photoshop etc
Hold disks and CD-ROMs by the edges – If you hold CD/DVD disk on the surface it may cause data – read error. You can avoid it by holding them from the edges.
Close all Programs before you shut down your computer – Normally when you decide to Shut down your pc, windows automatically start killing all the running programs (processes) and if you are working on an application and you did save your work and you directly click on shutdown, it still may cause loss of data or program malfunctioning. To avoid this situation, it is always a best practice to save all data first and close all programs manually before clicking on shutdown button.
Use Hibernate option – It is a good feature of windows which lets user to save all work quickly into a single file which is of same size of RAM, because all data which is in the RAM is saved into the file and computer is turned off and when computer turned on again, windows simple load data from that file to the RAM. This will help save your time of loading all the applications and relevant files which you were using in your previous boot-up.
Don’t bring food or drinks near your computer – You should not bring food and drinks near your pc because the crumbs and bits of food will get trapped within the keyboard and mouse and any spilled liquid can do serious damage to the computer’s electronics and this could also cause a your pc to brake or even electrocuting yourself.
Keep magnets away from your computer and disks – Bringing a powerful magnet close to a drive will “corrupt” the data as the individual flux lines will change certain bits.