Tips for preventive maintenance of the PC

You must take into account a crucial factor when we talk about PC maintenance: keeping it in good condition saves you money in the long run, since it avoids problems and makes devices last longer, preventing breakdowns or, as we will see below, even misfortunes caused by everyday accidents.

Tips for preventive PC maintenance

Not taking the necessary measures in the end can inevitably lead to problems with the PC, and can even cause it to stop working and force us to have to repair it. So, next we are going to give you a series of fundamental tips to prevent this from happening:

Keep liquids and drinks away

Especially in summer, it is common to have a bottle of water or a soft drink near the PC, especially when we plan to spend many hours in front of it. As you know liquids can be fatal for electronic components, and if we are not careful we could have an accident and spill liquid on the keyboard or even on the PC. Therefore, it is important that you always keep them away from the computer, so that even if you accidentally spill it, it does not affect the PC.

Never leave the PC on the floor

As much as you clean your home often, the floor is the first place where dust and dirt are deposited, not to mention the one we wear in our shoes and that we scatter as we walk even if we don't see it (and if you have pets , even more). And since virtually all PC cases have fans that blow fresh air from the outside in, they will absorb this dust much more easily if they are on the floor than they are on the table.

On the other hand, having the PC on the floor and especially if it is under the table where you have the monitor and peripherals, will make you more likely to accidentally hit you or accidentally pull cables.

For these reasons, it will always be more advisable to have the PC case on the table than on the floor.

Cleaning the PC frequently is part of its maintenance

We will not tire of repeating that the PC must be cleaned regularly, in order to prevent dirt from accumulating inside. Even if you have dust filters, part of it always ends up going in and depositing on internal hardware. And you know, dust with heat solidifies into soot, which is a conductor of electricity, so it can pose a danger to the integrity of the equipment.

In addition to cleaning the PC itself, it is always a good idea to also keep peripherals clean, including keyboard, mouse, headphones, mouse pad and also the monitor. They will last much longer in good condition if you keep them in good condition.

Do not turn off the PC using the power button

For many years now, all computers have used ATX power supplies, which allow us, among other things, to be able to turn off the PC from the software without having to physically turn it off by pressing the button. Doing so, in fact, can damage it – especially the data stored on the disk – because half-operations remain, even if you weren't doing anything at the time. And although it is a redundancy, it is not superfluous to say that the same applies to turning it off by pulling the cable or turning off the power strip to which you have it plugged in.

To turn off the PC, always use the operating system. In Windows 10, all you have to do is right-click on Start and select Shutdown or logout -> Shutdown. In this way, a controlled shutdown of the equipment is performed, ensuring that there are no half operations. It seems silly and somewhat obvious, but this maximizes the useful life of the PC components, especially as we said about the storage units and the power supply.

You should also do software maintenance on the PC

Until now we have given you tips to carry out preventive maintenance on the PC with the objective of precisely preventing possible problems, but it is true that most of the time PC problems come from software. For this reason it is also necessary to carry out certain "good practices" related to the software, such as:

• Keep the equipment updated (both the operating system and the drivers).
• Don't install software you don't trust.
• Try never to fill the system disk.
• Delete the apps you don't use.
• When browsing the Internet, do not enter websites of dubious reputation.
• Be sure to enable the SSD optimization options in Windows 10 (if you have SSD).