The Basics of Computer Maintenance

I've been on my hands and knees today trying to fix my sister's pc. It switches itself off without warning. At first I thought it was a hard disk, memory, processor or a power issue.

Surprisingly, the problem was accumulated "dust" on the processor fan. There are dust particles everywhere that accumulate over long periods and make their home in the most surprising of places. You're probably wondering how dust can stop a PC working. The dust on the fan blades slow it down and thus it no longer cools the processor down. The point I am trying to make is that periodically every 6 months to a year, it is a good idea to give your PC a good clean.

Do you remember the first few days of having your new PC or laptop; how quick was it? Have you noticed that it has noticeably slowed down now after continued use? If the answer is 'yes' then it is because of file fragmentation.

In a nutshell, fragmentation occurs with the normal use of a computer, installing programs, using a word processor or even surfing on the Internet etc.

Your hard drive stores file clusters. Depending on the size of the file it may comprise of many clusters. When you save a file the operating system saves the file as quickly as it can to the drive. Over time, the file cluster get disorganised / fragmented. So when you try to open your file the computer is looking for all the clusters of the file before it can open it.

De-fragment your computer periodically once a fortnight or on a monthly basis using the Disk Defragmentor.

Go to Start > All Programs > Accessories > System Tools > Disk Defragmenter

Click on Analyse. Windows will tell you if you need to de-fragment your disk.