How to look after your computer: five essential tips

A computer is an expensive purchase, and you could need it for quite a few things. If you work from home, it’ll be a necessity.

Naturally, you’ll want to avoid having any issues with it, which means knowing how to look after your computer. Countless people have issues with this, and it’s easy to see why.

Computers are inherently technical, and there are countless factors involved in them. You could feel like looking after it is impossible by yourself.

Thankfully, it isn’t. With a few basic computer maintenance tips, it could be a lot easier than you’d think. It’s just a matter of putting a bit of time and effort into them. Five of these could help a lot more than you’d think.

1. Wipe Down the Monitor

Not all of the ways to look after your computer have to focus on software or hardware issues. Some of them could be a lot more basic than that. One of the more basic of these is keeping your computer clean. Your monitor will be one of the more important parts of this, and it’s worth focusing on.

Giving this a regular clean is recommended, and it shouldn’t take you a lot of time or effort. Make sure you use a microfiber cloth for this to avoid any damage to your monitor. You’ll keep your monitor clean without causing any more issues.

2. Know Basic Troubleshooting

No matter what you do, countless things could come up with your computer. Thankfully, most of these will be relatively basic, and you can sort them out yourself. It’s just a matter of knowing how to do a bit of basic troubleshooting. A bit of Googling can help with specific issues, like external hard drive not working.

Usually, these should only take a few minutes to sort out. You’ll only really need to see a professional if none of the basic troubleshooting steps don’t help. That’ll only be in rare cases, however, and you should be able to do most of it yourself.

3. Run Scans Regularly

Speaking of basic troubleshooting, running regular scans on your computer is part of this. It’s worth running them every few weeks to make sure there aren’t any software issues with your computer. Antivirus and malware scans are the most notable of these. Thankfully, running them shouldn’t be too complicated to do.

There’ll be programs already installed on your computer to do this, and it’s just a matter of running them. It could be worth upgrading them at some point or another, though. The free options you have mightn’t be nearly as effective as the paid options you could go with.

4. Clean the Keyboard Regularly

As mentioned above, you’ll need to clean your computer regularly. This doesn’t just apply to the monitor, though. You’ll also need to clean the keyboard. Dirt and debris can build up in this a lot more than you’d think. You’ll see most of this on the keys themselves, and that’ll be quick and easy to clean.

Don’t overlook under and between the keys, though. This is where most of the dirt and debris can build up. If left unchecked, it could end up meaning your keyboard doesn’t work nearly as well as it should.

5. Defrag the Hard Drive

Your hard drive is one of the most important parts of your computer. It could experience more than a few issues, but not all of these are as major as you could think. Some of them can be relatively easy to fix. It might just be a matter of defragging the hard drive, and there shouldn’t be anything to worry about.

Defragging your hard drive shouldn’t take a lot of time or effort. You’ll have an option in your computer menu to run it, and it’s just a matter of clicking on it. It’ll run for a few minutes, and there shouldn’t be much to worry about.

Wrapping Up

Your computer could be an essential part of your daily life. You could use it for work and more than a few other daily tasks. You’ll naturally want to avoid any problems with it because of that. To do this, you’ll need to know how to look after your computer.

This doesn’t always have to be as complicated as you could think. A few basic computer maintenance tips could be relatively simple, and they’ll help with your computer more than you’d think. It’s just a matter of putting some time and effort into them.