Vacuum Your Computer: PC Cleanup that You Can Perform

This computer maintenance is not only things you should do with files, hard drives and programs, but with the physical parts of your computer such as the tower, keyboard and monitor to keep it healthy for a good long time.

There are many things you should be doing with your computer to keep it running correctly and looking like it just came out of the box, or almost.

Some of the things you will need to perform this routine maintenance on your computer are a vacuum with a nozzle attachment or crevice tool, one with an even smaller end would be all that more helpful, some window cleaner, a couple of rags or paper towels, some tweezers, and some rubbing alcohol. A screw driver of the kind that matches the screws on your main frame or tower.

We'll start with the physical things that you should do on a regular basis, say twice a year to keep your computer in top shape and in better working order.

Start with the power off to all the parts of the computer, tower or main frame, monitor, printer, scanner and any peripherals.

This is important as we will be poking inside some of these, so pull the power cords out of the wall. Unplug them so you cannot get hurt by electricity.

First we'll start with the tower or main frame. You will need a vacuum with a nozzle attachment or crevice tool for this part. Your main frame is the heart of your computer. In side are all the components that make your whole system work. There is also dust in there.

You can clean this out if your careful. First you need to get the cover off. The manual that came with your computer should have instructions for getting this off but we'll go over it here.

There is one cover that all manufacturers of computers have made easy to come off for maintenance, usually with only one screw holding it on. You need to figure out which cover this is. There are two usual ways to do this, either the cover is on the side of yours or on the top.