How does the dust in your computer relate to fixing a slow computer? Well what happens is that the fans inside your computer get clogged up with dust over time. This makes them noisier and stops them from working. When the fans don't work your computer components, like your CPU and GPU, over heat. This causes them to function slower and will eventually cause them to break down completely.
In this article, we will explain how to get rid of the dust, as well as how to clean up the rest of your computer.
What you will need:
1. Vacuum cleaner (this is the most important dust elimination tool)
2. Screw driver (You will need to open your computer box)
3. Cotton swabs
4. Rubbing alcohol
5. Can of compressed air (safer than the vacuum cleaner)
6. Paper towels
7. Water
Cleaning the box on the inside:
You should do this every five to eight months.
Open the box on the opposite side of your motherboard. Do not touch anything inside the computer. Keep your compressed air or vacuum cleaner nozzle three inches away from the components at all times. With the vacuum cleaner, use a medium power setting. Then go ahead and clean the dust out of there. Make sure to pay special attention to the fans and the bottom of the case, as that is where the dust tends to gather.
Cleaning the computer's plugs
Your computers plugs can stop working if you get dust in there. You don't want to clean it with water, because it can short out. Use the cotton swab and the rubbing alcohol. Wet the one end of the swab, clean with that end, then dry with the other end.
Keyboard Cleanup
Turn the keyboard upside down and shake vigorously. The crumbs and other gunk will drop out.
Use your rubbing alcohol and swabs to clean the keys.
In case of coffee spill on the keyboard: It is not always possible to recover from this, but you can try the following: Turn the keyboard upside down and dry with paper towels. Blow compressed air between the keys. Leave the keyboard upside down over night and hope for the best.
Computer Screen
First unplug the screen. Use paper towels and water to clean the screen. Do not apply liquid directly to the screen, spray it on the towel then clean it. Laptop screens are different from computer screens and you should buy some laptop screen cleaner to do the job.
Defrag my Computer
Hard disks, even with the fastest in commerce (above 7200 RPMs) often constitute the main 'bottleneck' to the speed of a computer. The time to access a particular cluster on a hard drive can be, up to thousand times slower than access the same amount of memory on a RAM dimm. When the hard disk is empty, the file system is free to write the files on the hard disk to an optimal location, but after a few deletes and rewrites, what will happen is that data related to the same application will be saved onto non continuous clusters. This means the hard drive head has to move around more, to get to the data, making data retrieval and update much slower.
When you run a defraging program, it rearranges all the files in a contiguous and optimal way, so to minimize the access time by the hard disk, thus reducing the 'bottleneck'.
Defraging a drive takes about 30 minutes, during which time you will not be able to use your PC.
It is worth noting that if your hard drive is near to full capacity it will be more prone to fragmentation.
Why should I defrag my computer ?
How frequently should I defrag my computer ?
You should check it every 3 months. The defrag program will show you how fragmented your drive is. If the fragmentation is less than 1 % you do not need to defrag your drive.
Defrag in Windows XP
Click Start > Programs > Accessories > System Tools > Disk Defragmenter
Click on the drive that you would like to defragment.
Click on the analyze button to see if you need to defrag your hard drive.
Click on defragment to defrag the selected drive.
Vista
Vista has a built in defragmenter that runs automatically.
You can open it by clicking: Start > Programs > Select the Control Panel Home >System and Maintenance > Under the Administrative Tools section at the bottom, click Defragment
Got a Linux PC?
I recommend that you download e2defrag and use that to clean up your drive.
Got a Mac?
Apple computers don't come with a free defrag program like Windows PCs, you will need to buy a program like iDefrag, to defrag a Mac. It is worth noting that the Mac OSx operating system is very resistant to fragmentation. So you might not need to defrag it.
When you run a defraging program, it rearranges all the files in a contiguous and optimal way, so to minimize the access time by the hard disk, thus reducing the 'bottleneck'.
Defraging a drive takes about 30 minutes, during which time you will not be able to use your PC.
It is worth noting that if your hard drive is near to full capacity it will be more prone to fragmentation.
Why should I defrag my computer ?
- A fragmented drive is slower to read than a non-fragmented drive. The speed difference can be significant.
- Your hard drive will be less prone to breaking if you defragment it regularly.
How frequently should I defrag my computer ?
You should check it every 3 months. The defrag program will show you how fragmented your drive is. If the fragmentation is less than 1 % you do not need to defrag your drive.
Defrag in Windows XP
Click Start > Programs > Accessories > System Tools > Disk Defragmenter
Click on the drive that you would like to defragment.
Click on the analyze button to see if you need to defrag your hard drive.
Click on defragment to defrag the selected drive.
Vista
Vista has a built in defragmenter that runs automatically.
You can open it by clicking: Start > Programs > Select the Control Panel Home >System and Maintenance > Under the Administrative Tools section at the bottom, click Defragment
Got a Linux PC?
I recommend that you download e2defrag and use that to clean up your drive.
Got a Mac?
Apple computers don't come with a free defrag program like Windows PCs, you will need to buy a program like iDefrag, to defrag a Mac. It is worth noting that the Mac OSx operating system is very resistant to fragmentation. So you might not need to defrag it.
Computer Backup and Restore XP Vista
What is the registry:
The registry is a list of all the software installed on your computer. Whenever you run a program Windows looks at the registry, to see what data needs to be loaded into memory.
It also stores all the computer user profiles as well as the hardware profiles.
Clearly your computer would not run very well without the registry as a matter of fact you couldn't even boot it up.
Why backup your registry:
The registry can get damaged, which means it will either make your computer run slowly or it will cause a crash, when you try to run some of your programs. If this happens you have 3 options: you can reinstall Windows and all your programs, you can rollback to an older version of your registry or you can use a registry cleaner to fix your registry.
How does the registry get damaged:
Sometimes programmers don't do a good job of coding the software that adds and removes entries to the registry. So over time as you install and uninstall programs the registry becomes larger and contains a lot of irrelevant data. This makes running programs slower and slower. In this case you will need to use a registry cleaner. Rolling back to a previous version of the Windows registry won't help.
If your computer gets infected with a virus or spyware, they can intentionally damage your registry. Even after you removed the malicious software, your registry would still be damaged.
When to backup your registry:
I would do it every two months, as well as before you install anything. Especially if what you are installing is a large program or something that's a little dodgy.
Import the registry:
Safest:
1. Under the Start menu select Run
2. Open Regedit and select OK
3. In regedit go to the File Menu and select Import
4. The import window will open.
5. In this window navigate to your registry backup file and click on it.
6. Select Open
Backup the Registry:
1. Under the Start menu select Run
In vista, you’ll need to hit winkey+R to open the Run box.
2. Open Regedit and select OK
3. In regedit go to the File Menu and select Export
4. The export window will open.
5. Under export range select All
6. Under file name, put an appropriate name.
7. Save as file type Registration Files (*.reg)
8. Click save
Computer Slow Internet
First we will look at how your internet connection works. After that we will look at ways to fix a slow internet connection.
Ping and bandwidth explained
There are 2 measurements of internet speed, ping and bandwidth. Bandwidth is measured in KB/s(Kilobytes per second) and ping is measured in ms(milliseconds). Both of these are measured between two computers connected by the internet. It is best to measure it between two computers that are not to far apart physically as moving data over long distances can slow it down.
Bandwidth is the amount of data that can be moved per second. It is important when you are moving large files. For instance when you download a movie. You will probably have a different bandwidth for uploading and downloading data.
Ping is the time that it takes for a small amount of data to travel to a server and back. This is important when you try to play games online.
Adsl vs wireless
For this discussion we will take adsl to mean any means of connection to your ISP(Internet Service Provider) that uses a digital cable. Wireless is any means of connection that does not use a cable.
Generally adsl is always faster than using a wireless solution. The only reason to use a wireless contection is if you move around a lot and want to use the internet wherever you go. The bandwidth of wireless solutions tend to be ok, but the ping is ussually really bad.
If you are only using a wireless solution for web browsing and it is slow. That might mean that you are in an area with weak coverage for your connection type. Call your ISP they should be able to tell you if this is the problem. If it is, switch to adsl.
Testing your internet connection speed
You can test your internet connection speed for free at SpeedTest.net
In terms of bandwidth most people only need about 500 kb/s a higher end user might want 1,000 kb/s. The test should show a ping of 10-100 ms if it's more you have a problem there.
Ping and bandwidth explained
There are 2 measurements of internet speed, ping and bandwidth. Bandwidth is measured in KB/s(Kilobytes per second) and ping is measured in ms(milliseconds). Both of these are measured between two computers connected by the internet. It is best to measure it between two computers that are not to far apart physically as moving data over long distances can slow it down.
Bandwidth is the amount of data that can be moved per second. It is important when you are moving large files. For instance when you download a movie. You will probably have a different bandwidth for uploading and downloading data.
Ping is the time that it takes for a small amount of data to travel to a server and back. This is important when you try to play games online.
Adsl vs wireless
For this discussion we will take adsl to mean any means of connection to your ISP(Internet Service Provider) that uses a digital cable. Wireless is any means of connection that does not use a cable.
Generally adsl is always faster than using a wireless solution. The only reason to use a wireless contection is if you move around a lot and want to use the internet wherever you go. The bandwidth of wireless solutions tend to be ok, but the ping is ussually really bad.
If you are only using a wireless solution for web browsing and it is slow. That might mean that you are in an area with weak coverage for your connection type. Call your ISP they should be able to tell you if this is the problem. If it is, switch to adsl.
Testing your internet connection speed
You can test your internet connection speed for free at SpeedTest.net
In terms of bandwidth most people only need about 500 kb/s a higher end user might want 1,000 kb/s. The test should show a ping of 10-100 ms if it's more you have a problem there.
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