[SOLVED] What are important computer maintenance steps folks can do at home?

[SHaines]

With so many of us stuck at home and potentially using our home computers to work at home full time, systems are being put through more stress than normal.

What are some suggestions you have for folks who may need some help cleaning, or doing some routine maintenance, on their computers?

Pretty much any tricks to keep things running smoothly are appreciated. If you can arrange them in a numbered list of steps to take, that'll make it even easier for folks at home to squeeze the most performance out of their machines.

Thanks in advance!

 

[helper800]

1. Download and run Ccleaner to get rid of a lot of useless temporary files and cookies on your browsers. This will allow for more performance in browsing. https://www.ccleaner.com/ccleaner/download

2. Download and install CoreTemp to monitor your CPU temperature. This will inform you as to whether or not your CPU is being thermally throttled. https://www.alcpu.com/CoreTemp/

3. IF your CPU is being thermally throttled you can buy a can of air duster and blow out your computer case. This will help maintain thermals on the CPU for longer periods before thermal throttling. WARNING Dusting out your computer case needs to be done safely or you can potentially damage your computer components. Make sure that before you open your case you discharge built up static electricity on an unpainted and grounded metal surface OR use an anti-static wrist strap connected to the outside edge of your case while you clean it out with a duster.

4. Make sure that all drivers for your Motherboards feature set are updated by checking your motherboard manufacturer's website. Make sure that your graphics card drivers are also up to date by going to either Nvidia's or AMD's driver website.

 

[RealBeast]

First and foremost -- make the area near your computer a coffee/liquid free zone. Now is not the time to have a catastrophic failure.

 

[Insane Potatoz]

If you have an older PC, running on a hard drive instead of an SSD, it is worth some time to remove applications that start running in the background right when you boot up the PC. This will help with boot times and free up your RAM space during the boot.
Edit: As a second idea, make sure to click the real download button on sites so you don't get malware lol.
Oh yeah you could use malwarebytes to check if your system has malware by the way.

 

[Frag Maniac]

With all due respect, I like these threads but the reason I assume participation has dropped off is the last two that were linked to (this one and the prior one) had broken links. As someone stated about the last one, it's caused by an extra, unnecessary number at the end of the URL link.

The URL link for this page should read

https://forums.tomshardware.com/thr...intenance-steps-folks-can-do-at-home.3593605/

..instead it reads

https://forums.tomshardware.com/threads/what-are-important-computer-maintenance-steps-folks-can-do-at-home.3593605/5

 

[geofelt]

I would not be running any new software like cleaners or driver updaters' you are likely to get malware installed.
One run of malwarebytes free edition is sufficient.
Do a thorough full virus scan.

If you have any problem, find the cause and fix it, otherwise leave things alone.

Back up externally whatever you hold dear.
Take a system checkpoint before any maintenance.

If you have a washable front air intake filter, go ahead and clean it.
But do not try to wipe things or blow air to clean things out. You can cause damage by mistake.

Keep kids and cats away.

Stay safe.

 

[Frag Maniac]

I would not be running any new software like cleaners or driver updaters

Ditto on driver updaters, but CCLeaner is a long time known and respected tool and even referred to and used by a lot of tech forums that offer PC troubleshooting support.

 

[USAFRet]

Dust.
Take your PC outside and blow the dust out.

 

[bit_user]

First and foremost -- make the area near your computer a coffee/liquid free zone. Now is not the time to have a catastrophic failure.

Spills are usually just an opportunity for me to dismantle and clean my keyboards. Unfortunately, it seems I've been getting better at avoiding them, lately. My work keyboard is coming due for a cleaning, and my main home keyboard is years past due.

The only time I actually killed a keyboard that way was a Microsoft Natural keyboard (2nd gen, I think). It was what I think is termed a "membrane" keyboard, where the wires were printed on sheets of clear plastic. Then, I gather key-presses changed the capacitance between the "fingers" of the traces.

Anyway, however it worked, I made the mistake of waiting until morning to clean up a spill into it. My beer managed to etch away the trace in one spot, breaking at least a few keys, IIRC. As an ergo keyboard, about the only thing it had going for it was the split & angle of the key sections.

BTW, I find tea goes much better with computing than beer. I reserve beer for the pub or when I watch movies.

 

[bit_user]

Dust.
Take your PC outside and blow the dust out.

I had a Pentium 4 (Prescott) with a Zalman "flower"-style copper heatsink. It worked impresively well for its size, but the closely-spaced fins required annual cleaning. If I waited any longer, it'd overheat and I'd get temperature alarms.

After that experience, I wised up and switched to positive-pressure setups in future builds, with removable dust filters in front of the intake fans. These days, the only dust I have to remove is from the filters. The inside stays virtually spotless, and some of my machines move a decent amount of air!

 

[bit_user]

do not try to wipe things or blow air to clean things out. You can cause damage by mistake

I agree with advice against wiping (unless you know what you're doing and are extremely careful), but I have never seen nor heard of anything bad happening from using an air duster. I'm not saying bad things can't happen, but the benefits of dusting far outweigh the relatively small risks for someone who's careful.

As I said above, removable dust filters are the way to go. For them to be very effective, you pretty much need to use positive pressure.

 

[bit_user]

If you have an older PC, running on a hard drive instead of an SSD,

I thought about mentioning something about SSDs, but most everyone has an SSD, by now. If not, your whole machine is due for an upgrade.

Last Dec. I advised a co-worker on swapping his personal Nehalem i5 to a SSD. He came back and told me how much faster it was. Then, within a month, he had gone and replaced the whole thing with some store-bought Dell, IIRC. Oh well.

In truth, I'm not sure what pushed him to do it. It could be that he just didn't want to bother with doing a Windows 10 upgrade, too.

 

[Plicker19]

If Your PC is running slowly, Reset it. Open The Start Menu and search "Reset this PC." It will prompt you to keep your files, or remove them. It will remove all programs, though. Recently did it on an HP Pavilion and the Performance was boosted significantly.

 

[nofanneeded]

1- Never use a case without dust filter , and clean every 6 months .
2- Never use low grade fans ... it pays off with time.
3- Have a Clean Recovery Image made every 6 months. dont use old recovery , allways update the recovery image or renew it.
4- Never Put the OS and the Programs and data on the same harddisk dont even partition , use a different HDD/SSD for programs and Data and keep the OS SSD/HDD just for OS .
5- Upgrade to SSD whenever is possible on old machine ...
6- remove bloatware ..
7- never over install programs , just install what you will use within one month.
8- Never Overclock when it is not needed.
9- Keep the PC away from Pets ... isolate the PC in a closed room if you can.
10- upgrade the memory when ever it is possible /or cheaper ...
11- replace keyboard and mouse after 2 years of use.
12- double check any harddisk that is out of warranty , move the DATA ASAP when it is out of warranty. and dont buy cheap 3 years warranty one.. go for the 5 years warranty ONLY.

 

[nofanneeded]

Ditto on driver updaters, but CCLeaner is a long time known and respected tool and even referred to and used by a lot of tech forums that offer PC troubleshooting support.

Dont trust CCleaner . I stopped using it after some spying bug was discovered by kaspersky few years ago.

https://www.kaspersky.com/resource-center/threats/ccleaner-malware

 

[bit_user]

11- replace keyboard and mouse after 2 years of use.

Oh, I dunno, maybe wash your hands and don't always eat or touch your face/hair while using the PC.

The guy with the nastiest keyboard at my office doesn't always do the first, and routinely does the rest. I even complained to my boss, when I saw him go #2 and walk right out of the men's room without even going near the sink. On multiple occasions. It seemed to do the trick, because he's always pointedly washed his hands since then, at least when I'm in the rest room (I have wondered if he knew I'm the one who ratted on him).

Anyway, whenever I've had to touch his keyboard, I immediately wash my hands before I touch anything else. I mean, for the years that we actually worked together, back when there were these things called office buildings and people would work together inside of them.

But, every 2 years? That's nuts!! I routinely get about 5 years, or more, out of decent mice or track balls. And I've used the keyboard I'm typing this on for about the last 15 years. Just buy decent equipment and take care of it. It's really not that different from your point about quality fans paying off, over time.

12- double check any harddisk that is out of warranty , move the DATA ASAP when it is out of warranty. and dont buy cheap 3 years warranty one.. go for the 5 years warranty ONLY.

First, the boring but sound advice is to backup anything you don't want to lose. If you can't afford to backup everything, just backup the stuff that's more valuable to you than the price of the backup media. If you're having trouble deciding, imagine you lost it and ask yourself how much you would pay to get it back. Incidentally, I use a similar strategy for deciding how much to bid on ebay auctions for items without a well-established market value.

As for failing disks, check the SMART stats and look for error messages. You can also run the drive's own self-test, though a lot of drives seem to periodically self-test themselves, these days.

As for warranty terms, I just had a disk fail after < 100 hours of use, even though it was sold as an "enterprise" drive with 5-year warranty and supposedly 2M hours MTBF. You can't entrust your data to a warranty. Still, the warranty is perhaps reasonable assertion about the expected service life of a disk (i.e. how long you should plan to use it, before replacement). In spite of that, I just got nearly 10 years out of 5 disks (100% survival rate) with a 5-year warranty, but they spent about 85% of the time powered down.

 

[helper800]

@bit_user I feel offended you didn't have anything to say about my post. Sarcasm

 

[bit_user]

@bit_user I feel offended you didn't have anything to say about my post. Sarcasm

Eh, just keep at it. I'm sure I'll find something to say, sooner or later.

 

[Plicker19]

I had a Pentium 4 (Prescott) with a Zalman "flower"-style copper heatsink. It worked impresively well for its size, but the closely-spaced fins required annual cleaning. If I waited any longer, it'd overheat and I'd get temperature alarms.

After that experience, I wised up and switched to positive-pressure setups, with removable dust filters in front of the intake fans. These days, the only dust I have to remove is from the filters. The inside stays virtually spotless, and some of my machines move a decent amount of air!

I Have a Pentium 4 Willamette With a Cooling Shroud. It Keeps Everything at a stable Temperature.

 

[bit_user]

I Have a Pentium 4 Willamette With a Cooling Shroud. It Keeps Everything at a stable Temperature.

Yeah, my employer had me using a Dell Optiplex with a Pentium D. It had an enormous (at least 140 mm) front fan, funneled into a tower-style heatsink. That cooled the thing pretty well, without making much noise.

Part of my problem was definitely the narrow spacing of the fins towards the center of that Zalman flower heatsink, where you need the airflow the most. I think it's no accident they fell out of favor and got replaced by heatpipe-based designs.

 

[Plicker19]

Yeah, my employer had me using a Dell Optiplex with a Pentium D. It had an enormous (at least 140 mm) front fan, funneled into a tower-style heatsink. That cooled the thing pretty well, without making much noise.

Part of my problem was definitely the narrow spacing of the fins towards the center of that Zalman flower heatsink, where you need the airflow the most. I think it's no accident they fell out of favor and got replaced by heatpipe-based designs.

I Did happen to find one of those heatsinks in my cabinet, just never went to use it.

 

[Frag Maniac]

Dont trust CCleaner . I stopped using it after some spying bug was discovered by kaspersky few years ago.

https://www.kaspersky.com/resource-center/threats/ccleaner-malware

That had to be a false positive, which the more aggressive AVs are known for. I use CCLeaner pretty much weekly followed by Malwarebytes and Malwarebytes Anti-Rootkit and never once have I had spyware from CCLeaner.

 

[helper800]

That had to be a false positive, which the more aggressive AVs are known for. I use CCLeaner pretty much weekly followed by Malwarebytes and Malwarebytes Anti-Rootkit and never once have I had spyware from CCLeaner.

It definitely did happen, however, it has since been sorted out and there is nothing wrong with the current Ccleaner version.

 

[Rechargeable]

Dust.
Take your PC outside and blow the dust out.

This exactly what I did. Always a risk as far as static is concerned but a few weeks ago I had been monitoring my cpu heat only to be horrified as to what I found once the cpu was under heavy load. Up to 98 degrees celcius on an old I5 760! Performed this task as my options were very limited and now the highest temp it reads with nothing else changed / altered in any way is 72 degrees Celsius. Huge improvement. Also worth backing up your main drive ie operating system on a new drive using a recommended freebie to certain extent's like Macrium reflect is what I use.

 

[tech_akshay]

I have seen most of the people suggest different software applications for maintaining a bulky and a bit old desktops. Software applications like file cleaner, driver updater, CPU temperature are the common suggestions here. Maybe, most people find it more authentic way to hunt down everything in a 'soft' way. It's fine.

But, I treat my old desktop in a 'hard' way first. That means, trying to face the issue through hardware maintenance. And, without installing any software. More software puts more pressure on the overall computing efforts.

My check-points for desktop maintenance:

1. De-dust everything in a gentle way, without harming any hardware parts
2. Cleaning Air-inlets and outlets
3. clean CPU fan and heat sinks.
4. Try to place the whole desktop in an airy section of the house

and lastly,
5. Running an Anti-malware if the machine is connected to web for internal system assessment.

That's it.