Dirty computers: Revenge of the dust bunnies

If I ever let my computer get like any of those above, I'd kill myself. I'm glad I married a computer techie. I'm a real nut when it comes to keeping my computer clean. Hubby does the cleaning for me every couple of months whether it needs it or not.
I've seen loads of computers come in to our place to have them "fixed" When hubby opens them up and sees all the **** and gunk we automatically know what 3/4 of the problem is. If people love their computers so much, why don't they take care of them, or at least learn the do's and dont's of their computers. I've never had a problem with my computer, and that's just the way I like it.

Primary reason why I blow out my desktop's case twice a year, check all the cable, adapter card, and memory module connections and seating, run system clean up weekly, scan for viruses and malware, and backup my working files. This is a prime example of pay me now, or pay for it later.

I did the same thing for the warehouse computers in a dusty environment for a previous employer. Nice company, but extremely cheap when it came to upgrading old systems. Don't really know if they appreciated the preventive maintenance.

Body shop dust is really sticky and thick.

The old 133mhz computer running in the back room had nearly an inch of dust in it (one of those lay down computers with the monitor on top). Fortunately, the system was fanless and only had a tiny heatsink on the processor. It never got hot.
The dust probably helped keep it warm in the winter, the back room had had its heating lines broken for a couple of years and in the winter it was often -10C in there, colder if the door was closed. +30C in the summer, no air-conditioning.

I don't know what happened to that machine, I think we sold it in a garage sale in 2010 still working perfectly.


You can just imagine the keyboard and mouse..... with everyone touching it with the grease, paint, dust, etc. It was truly disgusting.