Maintenance; Basic Maintenance Tips; Good Maintenance Practices; Keeping Your Computer Current - Lenovo ThinkStation P520 Hardware Maintenance Manual

It is a good practice to clean your computer periodically to protect the surfaces and ensure trouble-free
operation. Use only mild cleaning solutions and a damp cloth to clean the painted surfaces of the computer.
Dust buildup compounds problems associated with glare, so remember to clean the screen periodically.
Wipe the screen surface gently with a soft, dry cloth, or blow on the screen to remove grit and other loose
particles. Depending on the type of the screen, moisten a soft, lint-free cloth with an LCD cleaner or liquid
glass cleaner and then wipe the screen surface.

Maintenance

With appropriate care and maintenance, your computer will serve you reliably. This section provides
instructions on how to maintain your computer so that it can keep working in better condition.

Basic maintenance tips

Here are some basic points about keeping your computer functioning properly:
• Keep your computer in a clean, dry environment. Ensure that the computer rests on a flat, steady surface.
• Do not cover any of air vents. These air vents provide airflow to keep your computer from overheating.
• Keep food and drinks away from all parts of your computer. Food particles and spills might make the
keyboard and mouse stick and unusable.
• Do not get the power switches or other controls wet. Moisture can damage these parts and cause an
electrical hazard.
• Always disconnect a power cord by grasping the plug instead of the cord.

Good maintenance practices

By performing a few good maintenance practices, you can maintain good computer performance, protect
your data, and be prepared in case of a computer failure.
• Empty your recycle bin on a regular basis.
• Use the disk defragmentation or disk optimization feature of your operating system occasionally to
prevent performance problems caused by an excessive number of fragmented files.
• Clean out your Inbox, Sent Items, and Deleted Items folders in your e-mail application on a regular basis.
• Back up critical data regularly on removable media memory, such as discs and USB storage devices, and
store the removable media in a safe location. The frequency of making backup copies depends on how
critical the data is to you or your business.
• Back up your data on the storage drive regularly. See "Recovery information" on page 92.
• Keep your computer software, device drivers, and operating system up-to-date. See "Keeping your
computer current" on page 61.
• Keep a log book. Entries might include major software or hardware changes, device-driver updates,
intermittent problems and what you did to resolve them, and other issues you might have experienced.
The cause of a problem might be change in hardware, change in software, or any other actions that might
have taken place. A log book can help you or a Lenovo technician determines the cause of a problem.
• Create Product Recovery discs. See "Recovery information" on page 92 for more information about using
Product Recovery discs to restore the hard disk drive to the factory-default settings.

Keeping your computer current

In most cases, it is a good practice to have the most up-to-date operating system update patches, software
programs, and device drivers. This section provides instructions on how to get the latest updates for your
computer.
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Chapter 4 You and your computer
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