Developing

a
Preventive
Maintenance
Preventive Maintenance

-- is the key to obtaining years of trouble free

service from your computer system. A properly
administered preventive maintenance programs pays for
itself:

 by reducing problem behavior

 data loss
 component failure,
 by ensuring of long life for your system
 increasing your system's resale value because it willlook
and run better.
Two types of Preventive Maintenance
Procedures:

1) Active Preventive Maintenance

2) Passive Preventive Maintenance

1) Active Preventive Maintenance

-- includes steps you apply to a system that promote a

longer trouble free life. This type of preventive maintenance
primarily involves periodic cleaning of the system and its
components.

 Cleaning and lubricating all major components.

 Reseating chips and connections.
 Reformatting hard disk.
2) Passive Preventive Maintenance

-- includes steps you can take protect a system from

the environment includes:

 Examining the operating environment

 Power cycling (on/off)
 Static electricity
 Power-line noise
 Radio-frequency interference
 Dust and particles
 Using power-protection devices
 Ensuring a clean, temperature-controlled environment
 Preventing excessive vibration
Disassembling and Cleaning Procedure:

 Reseating socketed chips

 Cleaning Boards ( Be careful with ESD)

 Cleaning connections and contacts

 Cleaning floppy disk drives

 Cleaning the keyboard and mouse

Disassembly and Cleaning Tools:

Contact cleaning solution

Canned air

A small brush

Lint-free foam cleaning swabs

Anti-static wrist-grounding strap

Optional items:

 Foam type
 Low volatile room temperature vulcanizing (RTV)
 Silicone type lubricant
 Computers vacuum cleaners

Chemicals: You can use several different type of cleaning solution.

 standard cleaner
 contact cleaners/lubricants
 dusters.
 Contributors
to
System Failure
Dust and Particles

Effects:

 Build-up insulate the devices and prevent the release of the heat.

 The chips and other components to wear out even faster-memory chip
failures.

 Overheating and an early failures.

 Foreign particles can cause catastrophic problems, diskette jackets/drive

increase the wear on the drive.
Countering the effect of Dust.

 Use dust covers

 Keep window closed
 No smoking near your PC system
 No crumb-producing foods near your computer.
 No liquids on any equipment
 Don't touch the surface of any floppy disk.
 Clean your monitor screen with a static-reducing material.
Heat (Excessive Heat)

Effects:

 Premature aging and failure within the component.

 I/O connectors where the leads meet the chip itself.

 An open-circuit failure or "thermal wipe out”.

 The socketed chips to work themselves out of their sockets due to the
expanding and contracting of the pins.

 Disk failure, if the thin disk warps too much cause lose of information
stored on that floppy.
Countering Heat Effects:

The following suggestions should help in preventing heat-related failures.

 Reseat the socketed chips.

 Keep the cooling vent clear.

 Keep your system dust-free, both inside and outside, regularly.

 Keep your floppy disk in a cool, dry location.

 Install an external cooling fan id system operation becomes

intermittent when heated.
Cold
Effects:
 Mechanical components have trouble functioning when temperature
drops.
Mechanical sluggishness occurs with an increased possibility of
erratic data storage and retrieval.
 The floppy disk can become brittle as it gets cold.

Countering the effect of Cold

Let the system warm up to room temperature (stabilized) before turning on the
power.

 Using a forced-air cooling system that allows for even cooling the system.
Noise Interference

Three types of Noise.

 Noise that is acoustic and affects you.

 Noise that affects your computer system.

 Noise that affects other electronic equipment.

1. Radio-frequency Interfence (RFI) - 1 Hz-10 KHz
When your computer system and its cabling transmit or feedback
noise.

Conducted RFI--feedback noise

Radiated RFI --transmitted noise

Some ways to minimize RFI around your computer system:

 Locate your computer at least 6 ft from TV set.
 Use a directional outdoor TV antenna.
 Subscribe to cable TV.
 Connect line filters to your TV.
 Replace any antenna twin-lead wire to your TV with 75-ohm coaxial
cable.
2. Electromagnetic Interference (EMI) - above 10 KHz

The FCC Requirements-- Two categories:

a. Class A--are those devices use in industrial computing devices sold

for use in commercial, business, and industrial environments.

b. Class B--are those devices use by consumers computing devices used

in commercial, business and industrial applications, plus PC and
their associated peripheral.
Three primary components:

1. Transient EMI--is the undesirable response in electrical equipment

when simple turning on/off of a device causes a large
voltage pulse, or spike to occur and go smashing through the
circuitry.

2. Internal EMI -is the noise generated by the chips and other
motherboard device.

3. Electrostatic Discharge (ESD) can cause a "glitch" in electronic

circuits and can damage some components.
Some Specific Solutions to ESD Problems:

 Use an anti-static spray on your rugs, carpets, and computer

equipment.
 Install a static-free carpet in your computer area.
 Place your computer system on anti-static pads.
 Install an anti-static floor mat beneath you computer chair.
 Mop hard floors with an anti-static solution.
 Install a conductive table top.
 Keep chips in conductive foam when not installed.
 Touch a grounded metal object before touching components inside
the computer.
Effect of Noise Interference:
Garbled screen characters, frozen cursor, and diagonal lines to appear on
the screen. Also, programs can be stopped in the middle of an operation.
garbage can be read from or written to disks, paper can be jammed in the
printer, memory wipe out, and it can even destroy motherboard.

Noise Counter Measures:

 By shielding the source.
 Use insulating sound trapping enclosures
 Use sound-absorbing foam around their computer system.
 Acoustic pads placed under disk drives and printers can also reduces
noise
Corrosion
Three type of Corrosion that can affect the PC systems:
a. Direct oxidation by chemical change
b. Atmospheric corrosion
c. Galvanic corrosion

Corrosion Prevention
By keeping the contact clean.
Place a dust covers when it not used.
Clean the pins on some chips by reseating the chips
periodically.
Use contact cleaners sprays and wipes.
Magnetism

If you accidentally place one of your disks in the

field, the tiny pole magnets on your disk tracks can
change their alignment. The moral is: Keep your
diskettes, and even your information cables away
from power sources.
Power Line Problems.

Four Types of Power-line Problems:

a. Brownouts-- are those planned or sometime unplanned
voltages sags.
b. Blackouts-- caused by storms and lightning, is a total loss
of line voltage.
c. Transients--voltage spikes can be caused by lightning
striking a power line.
d. Noise (which discussed earlier).

Preventing Power-Line Problems.

Use power protects devices such as surge suppressors, line
conditioners, backup power supply and UPS
Maintaining
Your
System
CLEAN UP THE HARD DISK (DEFRAGMENTING FILES)

As the system reads and writes files on the hard disk during
normal use of your PC, the files on the disk become
fragmented-scattered around the disk in noncontiguous
sectors. When a file becomes fragmented, it takes longer to
access the file because the Hard disk heads have jump
around the disk to read and write onto the file.
Advantages when the hard disk is defragmented.
1. The system can read it quickly in a single pass without
moving the heads.
2. Defragmenting the drive improves system performance
considerably.

Three Functions are Found in Most Defragmenting Program

o File Defragmenting
o File Packing (drivespace consilidation)
o File Sorting

DEFRAG.EXE and SPEEDISK.EXE

- Reorganizes file on disk to optimize performance. A command to defrag
the hard disk (drive C).

Windows 9X:Click Start->Programs->Accessories->System Tools->

Disk Defragmenter
VIRUS CHECKING AND PROTECTION

A computer virus is a self-replicating, often self-destroying

computer program that moves from system unpredictable
and often undetectable ways. A computer virus can spread
rapidly. A virus detection and removal programs are getting
better all the time. Be prepared ! Have at least of DOS and
emergency disk handy and some form of virus detection and
prevention.
Here are the name of some popular virus scanner
nowadays:

AVG by Grisoft
Norton anti-virus by Symantec
PC-cillin by Trend Micro
Spy Doctor & Registry Mechanics by PC Tools
McAfee's antivirus, Panda Kaspersky and other
SPYware, Malware and SPAM killer Remover
SYSTEM REPAIR AND RECOVERY TOOLS

SCANDISK.EXE

This program enables you to scan the PC's disks and repair disk errors
such as cross-linked files and damaged file allocation tables.

Example:
DOS command:
A:\>SCANDISK C: /ALL /AUTOFIX /NOSUMMARY <Enter>

Windows 9X:
Click Start->Programs->Accessories->System Tools->
Scandisk
NDD.EXE - provides for both in depth and routine testing of either floppy
diskette or hard drives.

Example:
DOS command: C:\>NDD <Enter>

Note: Wait the Norton Disk Doctor's opening-options screen appear and
follow the on-screen procedure.

For complete Utility: NORTON UTILITY version 8.0 or higher and new
Norton System Works by Semantec is available for Windows.
REFORMATTING A HARD DISK
Periodically reformatting a hard disk is an operation that applies mostly
to older drives as part of a preventive maintenance plan. Modern IDE and
SCSI drives are preformatted from the factory, and already have all the
know defects mapped out.

Reformatting serves two purposes:

1.On servo controlled devices drives (stepper motor head
actuators) the low level format rewrites the sector header information
and alignment with the current heads.

2. A low level format is to locate and mark or spare out any new
defective sectors.

Disc Managers such EZ-Max by Maxtor & Disc Wizard by Seagate.

Maintaining Your hard Disk

1. Keep it clean.

2. Use AVR and UPS for power spikes, sags, surges.

3. Use computer memory such as RAM disk or a disk

cache or both.

4. Defrag your files.

5. Avoid against mild bumps and shocks.

6. Install Virus scanner.

Cleaning A Printer:
To keep your printer operating at its best, you should clean it thoroughly
several times a year.

1. Turned OFF the Printer.

2. Remove any parts to gain access inside the Printer.
3. Use a soft brush to carefully remove away the dust
and dirt.
4. If the outer case is dirt or dusty, you can use or clean
with a soft or clean cloth dampened with a mild
detergent dissolved in water.
5. For Color Printers, Never touch the print heads, ink may leak out and
cause stains.
Cautions: Never use alcohol,thinners, benzine or chemical cleaners to
clean the printer.
Cleaning Floppy Drives:

1. Use recommended floppy disk drives cleaners.

2. Use cleaning swab with liquid such as pure alcohol

.

Cleaning CD-ROM Drives:

1. Use recommended CD-ROM drive cleaners.

2. Clean the bottom surface of the CD with a soft cloth.

Sources:
Upgrading & Repairing PC’s 6th Ed. by Mueller
PC Complete by 2nd Ed. by Sybex
Troubleshooting & Repairing PC by Brener

Prepared by: PS Babol, Jr. CEITeD TESDA VI, Iloilo City