I'm going to do this with a friend's comp that he just brought over. It wouldn't boot up because the power supply was so ****ing dusty! rofl. As far as comps go, the general rule of thumb (with any maintenance) is to do it even every once in a while so it doesn't take your computer slowing down to a snails pace or exploding/catching on fire and such.
How did the computer slow down? I mean the CPU could have been hot for sure but unless it has some ability to drop the MHz in response to high heat, I do not see how it changed performance.
I did this whole routine on an old machine [from the year 2000] -- in addition to just cleaning everything I reformatted the drive and some other crap. Runs like a champ, but I only really use it now to play music -- i'm sure it would be fine for surfing the web.
This is a bit of a thread hijack but I'm working on an older computer (450 mhz, lol) and it boots up fine. Yet it beeps off and on. It's like someone randomly pressing a button, there's no real pattern to the beeps. I looked up his CPU temp and it's hovering in the high 40's (celsius)/low 50's. The high 40's and above would be normal for an overclocked quad-core, but a single core 450 mhz? I'm not sure if that's causing the beeping or not. It continues to beep despite turning off every alarm feature I can find in BIOS, so I can't quite narrow it down. Help?
The bearings in the CPU were dirty. Don't forget to change the grease inside it while you're in there - may as well get that taken care of while you have the hood open. Also, check the fluids and rotate the memory. Look for any cracks in the SATA cables and replace your chipset after 10,000 miles, too. Seriously, y'all need to vacuum or something if your pc's get that dirty. lol. CPU's don't run slower because of dust unless there's a throttle-down setting in the BIOS caused by excessive heat (which can be caused by dirty fans running slower). Fan failure can cause almost instantaneous frying of your CPU. There are no moving parts in a CPU (well, not in this century, anyway). If there's a whining coming from your computer and you suspect it's a fan, try cleaning it, but if it still whines, I'd replace it - it could be a sign it's about to go out and you could be looking at a more expensive replacement. BTW - you can also tape a used dryer-sheet to the intake(s) to cut down on dust inside.
I just scooshed my desktop. I guess it wasn't that dirty, and performance did not pick up as much as I had hoped. Will be buying a 1 GB dimm card tomorrow.
