Welcome to Data-drop.com. If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

Okay we all know you don’t want to kill your computer. I have come up with 3 surefire ways to put your computer on its knees.

1. Heat

We all know that computer hardware’s number one enemy is heat. What can a user do about this? The first thing I recommend is to keep it clean. Computer Maintenance, the Good, the Bad, the Ugly, is a great place to get started. One of the biggest problems I usually see when dealing with a heat issue is the placement of the computer. Computer desks that hide your system behind a door look great, but where is all that heat actually going. Most desks I found have a small hole in the back for your wires. In no way is this acceptable for keeping a computer running smoothly. Last month I went to a client’s house to help with a constant rebooting issue. The first thing I noticed was they purchased a new computer desk. Yes it had a door to hide there computer and all the cables. The first thing I did was open the door where the computer sits. I rebooted the machine to bios to check what the processor temp was. I was kind of shocked at the results, 72C. That’s pretty hot for a P4 system. So I pulled the machine out to check the processor fan, of course it was filthy. The fan was spinning properly but the heat sink was full of dust. I cleaned out the heat sink and other components and then checked the back of the desk. One small whole the diameter of the monitor plug is all that they had opened. The desk had pop outs for opening a larger area so we opened the largest area we could. I started the PC back in bios, it read 45C. That’s a pretty big change, but with no load on the system it was hard to tell where we actually would be running. I booted the pc into windows and told it to scan for viruses. After 45mins the scan completed and I rebooted to bios to check the temperature. It read 52C, this was not perfect but well within the means of the manufactures guidelines. Another bad spot for you computer is right in front of the heat vents, or in front of any other home heating device. I helped a guy that had his computer right up against the only heat source for the room. The case was hot enough I couldn’t touch it. I found a great tool for computer techs that I carry with me to every job. A laser thermometer lends a great view on just how hot things get.

2. Filling the hard drive to capacity

Even though this does not sound like a major problem, it severely deteriorates the systems performance. It will not kill your computer but it will make it extremely slow. I see this most often with a family with 1 computer with multiple profiles. You have a couple of kids downloading music to there own profile and it eats the space right up. The reason this impacts the performance of you computer is due to the swap space your computer uses to help programs load faster. Even if you leave about one gigabyte free you will still save some on performance. If you ask a user about there hard drive utilization, most don’t really know how much they have left. Keep and eye on it and Clean up any unused programs and your internet cache. You will be surprised on how much space these take up. Check out this guide on some programs that may help. If you find yourself with a filled hard drive you have a couple of options. Add a second drive to your machine to store all that information on or buy an external HD. Here is a good article to help clean up some of that junk.

3. No Protection, In more ways then 1

If you live in an area that is prone to summertime thunderstorms this is for you. Do you have a reliable surge protector that your computer is plugged into. I would imagine 50% of you probably don’t. I wrote 25 homeowners insurance claims last year alone. Guess what, they all use quality surge protectors now. I know they can be expensive but when it comes down to it, most quality surge protectors have some sort of “Connected Equipment Protection Policy” on devices plugged into them. My policy is actually up to 5 million dollars in equipment replacement. Surge protectors are a small price to pay for that extra bit of insurance.

Okay so what virus protection are you running on your pc? When was the last time it updated? The first 2 questions I ask on the phone when the symptoms point to Trojan or virus activity. 30% of the people I visit have no clue what virus protection they are running, or if they do, “it’s the one that came with my computer.” Usually a dead giveaway they have limited or no protection at all. I really feel there is no excuse for this, with the wide variety of virus protection available including very good free alternatives you shouldn’t be without some protection. Check out “Free Antivirus for Everyone” if your in the market for some free virus protection.

With these prevention tips, it will help you keep your investment running. If your not comfortable doing any of this on your own call your local technician for help, ask him how to stay protected I’m sure he can teach you a few things.