Clean the floppy drive. In addition to using canned air for the floppy drive, use a 3.5″ floppy drive cleaning kit. It consists of a cleaning disk and bottle of solution that you apply to the disk. First, apply the solution to the cleaning disk. Second, insert the cleaning disk into the floppy drive. Third, type: DIR A: (or DIR B:), which will spin the disk repeat this three times.
Reboot the system. If the work stations are left on all the time, reboot the system to force a memory reset and to make sure the machine will boot correctly.
Clean the mouse. It never hurts to make sure the mouse is free of dust and grime. Use isopropyl alcohol to clean the ball and the internal rollers to remove any grease, oil, and dust that may have accumulated.
Check the power sources. Make sure systems are plugged into protected outlets or power strips, if not uninterrupted power supplies.
Check the fan. Remember to check that the CPU’s cooling fan is working and the airflow is not impeded by dust. Use canned air to blow out any loose dust. Blow the dust out from the inside of the supply. Exercise extreme caution when working on an open power supply.
Change Passwords. It is a good security precaution to change your system passwords periodically.
Check the Printers. Print a test page on your printer. Make sure the printers are producing clean copies, and that the toner cartridges aren’t about to run out.
Update the anti-virus software.
Check the operating system and applications. Update your OS and applications with the latest service packs or updates.
Check the connections. Make sure all the plugs are snug in their connections. Make sure you are using a surge protector and not a string of extension cords to power their machines.
Clean the screens. Use the appropriate screen-cleaning cloth or solution. Update drivers are needed. Make sure you have installed the latest drivers for printers, modems, sound cards, video cards, and other devices.
Create or update the boot disk. Every Windows user should have a boot disk and every NT client should have an emergency repair disk. NT clients need to have their emergency repair disks upgraded with the RDISK/S command every time there’s a change in the network setup, such as the addition of new users or new devices.
Check browser history and cache files. Check that the user history files and Internet cache settings ate set properly. Delete the cache files and history files then reset the history files to no more that longer. By freeing up the cache, downloads from the Web actually speed up since there is more space available to store the temporary files.
confirm that backups are being done. Ask users when their last backups were done. Make sure they are rotating their disks. Remind them to verify the backups by trying to restore a sample file or folder.
Delete files that begin with a tilde. When cleaning the system of garbage files, check for any files beginning with a tilde (~). Make sure that all your application programs, such as word-processing, spreadsheet, and graphics programs, are closed first, since sometimes the temporary file you are currently viewing uses a tilde. If the application programs are closed, the tilde files can be deleted.
Clean out Windows temporary Internet files.
Empty the recycle Bin.
Delete .tmp files. Before running CHKDSK, SCANDISK or DEFRAG, delete all. *.tmp files that have been created prior to the current day.
Delete old .ZIP files. Users tend to unzip the files but then leave the zipped file on their computer.
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