With Spring in the air, now is a good time to do an annual cleanup of your office’s computers, servers, and electronic equipment, both inside and out. Failure to thoroughly clean your computers and servers at least once or twice a year will result in decreased performance and possibly even system failures.
Here’s why:
Dust clogs the computer’s cooling system causing it to heat up, damaging sensitive electronic equipment. Dust can also cause fan noise and (believe it or not) slow performance!
Crumbs and dirt in your keyboard can cause keys to stick and make crunchy sounds when typing. Plus, it’s just gross and unhealthy; do you know there are more germs on your computer keyboard than on an average public toilet?
But the physical “dirt” is only the beginning…
Here are five quick steps you can take today to clean up your systems and improve performance:
- Use Disk Cleanup to delete temporary files, unused programs, and any other files taking up space and slowing things down. (Start > All Programs > Accessories > System Tools > Disk Cleanup)
- Defrag your hard drive to speed up access to your data. (Start > Control Panel > System and Security > Administrative Tools > Defragment your hard drive).
- Update your spyware and antivirus software with the newest definitions. The internet changes fast. Having outdated security can slow you down dramatically.
- Make sure you have the latest security patches and updates installed and configured properly.
- Check your backups and conduct an emergency “restore” of the data. Remember, the best time to check your backups is when you DON’T desperately need to recover your data!
As far as frequency is concerned, a good “spring cleaning” once a year should be sufficient to keep most systems in a healthy state, though if you work in a dusty environment, more regular maintenance might be needed.
Today is as a good a day as any. If you have any questions concerning system maintenance or performance, always feel free to give us a call at 845-237-2117, or contact us here.
For more tips on Spring Cleaning your digital workspace, check out this article by the National Cybersecurity Alliance. We found it very helpful.
