A Little Dusty

Maybe a Lot

Had some trouble with my workstation today.  It’s a pretty nice rig that I built myself almost 2 years ago, running a core2 duo processor, 4 gigabytes of ram and an Nvidia 8800 GTS graphics card.  As a whole I keep my operating system, drivers, software and files in great shape and usually have no problems.  It has an amazing cooling system with many fans assaulting the CPU and graphics card with cool air.

Today, however, I noticed a number of slowdowns and lag with visually intensive applications.  I thought, perhaps, that I had a virus or that I had somehow ruined one of my drivers.  I spent about 2 hours downloading various antispyware and antivirus software packages and updating each of my drivers looking for a solution.

At some point my wife suggested that the computer was just plain dirty and that I ought to take it outside and clean it out instead of looking for hidden viruses that weren’t there.  A tornado of dust (including some golf ball sized chunks of it) came out of the machine when I finally set it up on my balcony and used compressed air from every imaginable angle to clean it.

I’m back up and running now smoother than ever.  Keep those computers clean and listen to your wife!

This entry was posted on Friday, June 27th, 2008 at 8:24 pm and is filed under Gadgets, Jon, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.