Have you been spring cleaning your home lately? It might be time to tackle your computer. You can clean out your hard drive, desktop, desktop and your work station to free up space and organize your digital life.
Regular computer maintenance is important for keeping your systems running well. It can help you prevent future issues.
Here’s are some spring cleaning tips to keep your computer in check:
- Sort and empty your recycling bin. It might feel like a simply thing to drag and drop files you don’t want anymore to your recycling bin or garbage can on your computer’s desktop. The truth is, unless you set up a deletion schedule. Files in the recycling bin continue to take up space on your hard drive until it’s emptied, thus permanently deleting the files.
- Run antivirus and Spybot-like programs. Make sure your antivirus and security software is up-to-date. If it’s not on a regular maintenance schedule, set one up.
- Spring cleaning your desktop. Many of us have the bad habit of just saving files to our desktop. After a while, it starts looking like a cluttered mess. Drag files your don’t need to the recycling bin and sort others into folders to contain and organize the chaos.
- Back up important and sentimental files. Do you have family photos, vacation shots, wedding photos and more on your home computer? Anything can happen and you could risk losing them all. There are two ways you can back up your files. The first way is to buy an external hard drive. You can plug it into your computer and load photos and important documents onto it for safe keeping. The second way is to use cloud storage, which means your files are basically saved on the internet.
- Delete default programs you never use. Some computers come with a whole host of programs as part of the standard package. For some, these are extremely helpful and useful, for others they just take up space on the hard drive. If you’ve never used it and it’s not critical to your computer, uninstall it.
- Dust and clean keyboard, mouse and monitors. Shut down and unplug your hardware and dust and disinfect your computer’s components. You can use canned air to blow dust out of small spaces. Make sure the power is off your monitors before wiping them down. Use a microfibre cloth and mild soap and water on your screens. Really wring out the cloth before wiping.
- Declutter desk. Tidying up and get rid of stuff on your desk. If it will help, buy some desk and drawer organizers so everything can have it’s own place.
- Recycle E-garbage. Do you have old cords you don’t know what they belong to? Speakers that don’t work anymore and broken mouses and keyboards? Find a local e-garbage depot to rid your home of old electronics. If you include old laptops, tablets or computer towers, make sure you erase all your personal files and information before.
If you need some help cleaning your hard drive or uninstalling or backing up files, contact us at TwinBytes today! We can help you get started on your spring cleaning!