Computer Preventive Maintenance: Ignorance vs Neglect (Part 1 of 3)

The weak economy is sure having an effect on the computer repair industry, but not the way you might think. People are relying on their computers more than ever before for entertainment, to find jobs, and to hunt for good deals. But as much as they depend on them, they tend not to put much thought into how to keep them going. Computers need periodic maintenance just like cars do. Without it, you might get up one morning just to discover your computer is broke. To you, it seems like it failed all of the sudden without any warning. But for others, they were well aware that their computer had been acting up for days or even weeks before it finally broke, but they put-off doing anything about it. As for family computers with many users, it gets hard for any one user to put together the whole story that led to the failure. As far as trying to repair your computer yourself, do your homework first. Some of the hardest problems we get are not from the original failure, but from trying to undo all the mistakes done by the owner or his “proverbial friend who knows computers”

I typically find that most computer failures don’t just happen over night, that they gradually got worse over time. For some reason, most people just ignore the initial symptoms, maybe because they weren’t show-stoppers yet. But once in a while, computers can suddenly crash when there is a power failure, a heat problem, outright abuse, or a defective part.

Even so, most “alleged” sudden failures probably had some warning symptoms that simply went unnoticed. Its no wonder though, because most computer users don’t know how to monitor the performance of their computers. They almost never open their computer cases and perform any periodic visual inspections, so all the little problems just silently brew into time-bombs waiting to explode. But as some would have you believe, their computer worked “perfectly” up until the minute that it suddenly broke without any warning…or did it?

I like to think of the hard drive as the “black box” on an airplane. If I find it intact, I can pretty much put the scenario together that led up to the failure. Windows monitors a wealth of information, and I almost always find that your computer was in no way working “perfectly” up until it failed. Of course, there are exceptions such as for a power outage, or when you first got hit with malware, or something went terribly wrong when you installed some hardware or software, or a Windows Update your computer didn’t like. And of these, it was probably because of a procedural error.

But other times, there are problems lurking behind the scenes like high blood pressure and high cholesterol. Just this week, I checked-in 3 desktop computers with bulged capacitors on the motherboard the customers never knew about. A computer motherboard with bulged or leaky capacitors might work OK for now, but could eventually start having random Blue Screens (BSODs) which will eventually lose video or won’t even power on. You could catch this type of problem early-on with a periodic visual inspection. Either way, you’ll need to replace your motherboard. The good news is that you can take care of the problem before your computer actually breaks. Ironically, most people will look the other way and forego the repair to save a buck because it hasn’t actually failed yet. When it finally does start acting up, some people assume they have a virus and get surprised when it is going to cost twice as much to fix, because  now it needs a major part. Sometimes, these types of problems cause other components to fail such as the power supply, so you could end up with multiple problems. So a periodic visual inspection can minimize further damage and allow you time to schedule a repair without it having to be an untimely emergency.

The picture below shows an example of some bad capacitors. These ones must have went undiscovered for a while because they look pretty bad. I’ll bet this board doesn’t work at all.

(click for larger image)

As for software problems like viruses and malware, today’s faster computers can handle the performance hit for a while without affecting the speed too much… at first. So many people just learn to deal with it rather than fix it right away. But these problems never get better by themselves and will eventually get your wallet’s full attention.

Hopefully you are beginning to see how ignorance and neglect are major factors affecting the life of your computer. I often get asked how long should a computer last? I might answer, my computer or yours? So I urge you to get a grasp of as many preventive computer maintenance tips as you can, and actually do them! Click for Part 2 of 3 of this series to learn a bit about the Windows Event Viewer which logs a wealth of information about the health of your computer.