Your Guide to System Care

Posted Jun 30, 2001 | by David Risley  

All components of the PC need to be cleaned up. This includes your monitor, printer, keyboard, mouse, etc.

Monitor
Take a moist rag, as used before, and wipe off the monitor. On the monitor, make sure to dust the screen off.
The screen usually attracts dust because of static charge, so you can often be suprised just how much can be
gotten off the screen. Also, make sure the cooling vents are free and clear from obstruction.

Printer
With the printer, the main concern will be to clean the dust off of the exterior, paper tray, etc. You also
want to clean the printer heads. This is typically done through your driver software by choosing an option and
then waiting for the printer to do its thing.

Keyboard
Keyboards often get layered with gunk over time and do, too, need to be cleaned. These items are bit unique,
though, because they are so cheap. If you ignore the keyboard, its not like they are expensive to replace.
Nonetheless, keyboards hold up quite well when taken care of. As a preventative measure, it is best to keep
food and drink away from the keyboard. If you spill liquid on the keyboard, it could halt operation or, at
least, cause problems with stickiness. Eating over your keyboard can mean crumbs fall in between the keys and
stay there in your keyboard.

Cleaning a keyboard can be easy or hard, depending on how in-depth you intend do go. If you try to take the
thing apart in order to REALLY clean the inside, sometimes this could ruin the keyboard. Not always, though. In
the least, you want to take a moist rag and rub down the keys so as to remove hand oil. It is, of course,
probably best to do this while the PC is off so that you don’t drive the computer nuts with key commands.
Getting below the keys is difficult unless you take the thing apart which is, in most cases, not worth it.
Sometimes you can vacuum the keyboard and suck junk up between the keys. Sometimes, you can turn the keyboard
upside down and gently smack the side of it a few times and watch some crumbs and junk fall out.

Mouse
Mice are a thing that can drive you absolutely nuts if they are not cleaned. I’ve seen more people complain
about choppy cursor movement or the cursor not moving well when they move the mouse. They complain, not knowing
that it is usually only because the mouse is chocked full of dust.

Now, there are different styles of mice. The most common is the roll-ball mouse. To clean this, turn the mouse
over and twist the cap that stands over the ball. You can then remove this cap and let the ball fall out of the
mouse. Once the ball is out, you can see the rollers inside. These rollers are what sense movement. In fact,
you can take your finger and roll those rollers around and move the cursor. These rollers can often become
chocked full of dust. Sometimes the dust can become tightly layered and wrapped around the roller. You can
remove this dust with a little rubbing alcohol. I have sometimes, though, just taken a pen cap or something and
pry the dust off and shake it out. However you do it, once the rollers are free and clear, reassemble the mouse
and you should find that the cursor is more responsive.

Other types of mice are cleaned differently. Some are optical, in which case you just make sure the sensor is
free and clear. Optical trackball mice can gather dust. Just snap the ball out and clean the surface out.

Which Of These Traits Applies To YOUR Computing Life?...

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