If you’ve already scoured your closet and emptied your garage, you may think your spring cleaning is over.

Think again.

The same way you would give your house a once over, so should you purge your computer. Spring cleaning will help your computer run more efficiently, can help protect you from viruses, and offers also a good opportunity to protect important files.

People keep valuable information, including photographs, on their computer but don’t back it up as they should, said Steve Yates, owner of Computer Renaissance in Springfield.

"If they lose all that, all their memories are gone forever," Yates said. "They need to protect it as if they were going to lose it tomorrow."

There are three things you should think about when spring cleaning your computer, said Luke M. Ford, chief executive officer of My Computer Works, a company in Phoenix, that offers network support across the nation.

Clean your equipment and your hard drive, then back up your files.

A lot of people have never physically cleaned the inside of their computer, which collects a surprising amount of dust, Ford said.

Because computer parts heat up, there is a fan built inside a computer. If too much dust gets into the fan, it can cause it to stop spinning, Ford said.

First, power down your computer and open it up. Your instinct might be to blow on it to remove dust, but you may end up spitting on it. Instead, buy a can of compressed air made for cleaning computers and use that.

Next, tackle the hard drive.

There are many things that can rob your computer of performance, but viruses and spyware are commonly to blame, said Yates.

David Gerhart, chief information officer of My Computer Works, said many people are not aware of the amount of spyware on their computer.

"There (are) so many neat things you can download from the Internet that are free. Nothing is free. A lot of times software that you download doesn’t charge a credit card, but attaches a spyware on there to monitor your usage," Gerhart said.

Avoid Web sites you are not familiar with and be very careful about what you download, said Yates. Buried somewhere in the user agreements that most people check without reading can be permission to attach spyware.

"When you (check the user agreement) the antivirus software lets it on through. There’s a lot of people that think the antivirus didn’t work, but you probably gave them permission to bypass it," Yates said.

You can buy software to remove spyware, but sometimes spyware has done so much damage the hard drive has to be wiped clean and reformatted. If that is the situation, contact a professional, said Yates.

Once you get rid of spyware, be sure to update your antivirus software, said Nick Calvert, who owns Computer Geeks in Springfield.

You need a good antivirus software; ones that are free are free for a reason, Yates said.

Even when people have good antivirus software, they don’t run updates like they should. Users should run an update every day if they use the Internet a lot, Calvert said.

Something else that can bog down a computer is excessive files in the temporary folder. Clean your temporary files folder about every six months, Calvert recommended.

Don’t forget to clean out your e-mail, too, including the sent items.

"You should go into sent files and see if there is anything you need to keep. That is a big thing," Ford said.

Don’t forget to delete deleted folders, too.

A "necessary evil" that can slow your computer is the antivirus software, but some are better than others.

"Before you buy something, you want to talk to a professional because there are products that are very well known that will really slow it," Yates said.

Now that you have removed unwanted items, be sure to make back-up files of everything you do want.

"The other thing is how often have you backed up your music or photos, not to mention your financials," Ford said. "Most people don’t back up. We get the calls after the computer has crashed, and if it wasn’t backed up, there is nothing we can do about it."

If your house were to burn, what would you want to save, asked Yates. Whatever comes to mind, you should make two copies and keep those in two different locations, he said.

At the very least, make one copy of everything important to you because you never know what can happen.

"One is good and two is better," Yates said, and added: "Computers are just pieces of equipment. They are all just pieces of equipment and they fail."

Source: news-leader.com