myrustycat,

There are some good general cleaning guidelines here and a wealth of links here. You are responsible for cleaning the computer, Dell will not send a tech to do it.

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@myrustycat wrote:

I have another question regarding my new Dell Computer.  My computer is exactly 5 months old.  After about a year I feel the tower needs some major cleaning with the vaccum. Maybe the plugs and wires need to be looked at to make sure they are in secure, etc.  I don't trust just anyone cleaning and dusting the tower.  How did others clean out their towers.  I feel the compressed air doesn't work.  Does Dell representatives come to your home to do maintenance?  I assume since this is a Dell Community Forum, everyone here owns a Dell Computer.

Thank You

Noreen

This forum is for Windows XP, not for hardware questions.

Dell doesn't do maintenance on your computer.

You should post this on the Dimension - General Hardware forum. 

Don't forget the monitor-- Dell doesn't do windows either. (And, from what I see in the Customer Service forum, Dell tech support also doesn't do WINDOWS).

That was funny.

 

Noreen

Right now I have several working PC although one hasn't be used since June.  The oldest was bought Nov 1997, the newest May 2003, I have cleaned none and do not to clean them either.  Thirty year ago technicians cleaned computers particularly the vacuum columns on tape drive and the filters on disk drives.  That was then, this is now.  Before I retired I worked for CSC and Verizon, nobody cleaned our PCs,  at Lockheed Martin our UNIX workstations werer not cleaned either.

Message Edited by msgale on 08-29-2004 11:23 PM

My old micron millennia P166 is 8 years old.

Never cleaned it once.

Still working - use the computer for legacy software/games (nostalgic).

Hmmm...a few years ago, I had to replace a Seagate SCSI hard drive in an Optiplex GX-300 because dust buildup in the case resulted in overheating and electronics failure of the hard drive daughterboard. There was evidence of overheating on the daughterboard. Fortunately, I was able to swap daughterboards and salvage the data on the failed drive. The drive failed during the warranty period.

Dust is a very good thermal insulator.

Jim

Jimw - Interesting comments, I ate a 2 year old drive on my PWS 530 (Segate 18 GByte 15,000 RPM U160 SCSI) , but the two Westerrn  Digital 7,200 RPM SCSI drives (9.1 and 4.0 GBytes) on my seven year old XPS D300 are still working - go figure.  Another comment, reading the original post, these is at least an implicitation that there are other time related problems.   "Maybe the plugs and wires need to be looked at to make sure they are in secure, etc."