Happy New Year

January 2003

Happy New Year, one and all!

Hopefully this new year will be one of happiness and success, for each and every one of us.

New computers seem to be the going thing these days... many of you were blessed with a new one over the holidays, or in the recent past. Today's computers are coming out with extremely fast processors - and this means a lot of heat is being generated.

What's this mean to you? Well, take a look at where you have your computer sitting. Does it have at least 8" of air space around it? If not, do some rearranging! How often do you plan on cleaning it? Your old computer may have let you get away with hiding six pounds of dirt and pet-hair in it, but these new ones just won't tolerate it. You will have to make sure you clean it regularly. How often will depend on how fast it accumulates dirt. If you *did* clean your old one from time to time, then you will have some idea of how frequently you need to clean your new one - just do it more often! If you never did clean your old one, or if this is your first, then your safest bet is to clean it after two months. If it isn't very dirty, then you can go a little longer until the next cleaning. Better safe than sorry. And if you start experiencing strange happenings with your computer, in particular if it should start locking up on your for no good reason (is there ever a good reason?), then it may be overheating. If overheating should become an issue, then you will need to invest in additional fans to keep cool air flowing over that high-power processor!

If your system does start overheating, you can experience a number of problems. Usually they will be random and cannot be recreated. So if your computer is acting really strange and you can't find any other culprit, this might be the problem. Some typical symptoms of overheating include - but are not limited to - system crashes, lock-ups, and random rebooting. Of course, many other problems can also cause these to happen, so some troubleshooting, as always, will be in order.

If you have any questions on how to clean your computer, or would like a hands-on lesson, just let me know!

 This site maintained by The Computer Counselor