My computer has been acting up a lot lately and today I went to price a new one. The one I have is 5 yrs. old - a HP. The salesman showed me one I really liked and then added, "do you ever clean your computer?". No I said. He said I might try to do this and see if this helps. I went home and got a paint brush out and did manage to get some dust out of the vents, but where else do you clean and how do you get to parts on the inside?
Do any of you quilters clean your computer? If so, how do you do it?

There are screws to take the cover off and then spray it out with a can of air It can make a big difference. That and doing disc cleanup and running derfrag should make a difference.

I am computer challenged. What is derfrag?

by "cleaning" he might have meant did you run a "defrag", clean up unused icons, folders, remove pix to a disc or thumbdrive,, could have meant anything...

all are MUST do's twice a year my son says...more if you actually USE the computer for more things..like photo storage!, website storage(your faves)...they all take up space and all make the puter run slower over time!
all those icons on your screen..take up space...

once a month I do a cleaning...I pitch old bookmarks, sites that no longer interest me, pix go on a disc and on my external hard drive, patterns get either printed or ditched..it takes a whole Sunday afternoon.
Then every 3 months my son comes over and opens my tower to clean it out for me!

Defragmentation. Look it up in the Control Panel menu- or do a search for it...

As mentioned earlier... he could have meant... physically clean the computer ...or... do some internal clean up. Depending upon the symptoms that caused you to go shopping for a new one would be the meaning of his question.

1) Physically cleaning your computer
All computers have 'fans' in order to keep them cool. They do attract dust. It is very important to clean out the dust at least twice a year otherwise your computer will not cool properly and hence not run properly.
Two things you DO NOT want to do:
**Do NOT use canned, compressed air. It contains moisture which is the absolute worse thing you can use on electronics. It is best to vacuum the dust out. I use the soft brush attachment and vacuum the vents on all my electronics (tv, dvd, cable box, etc) on a monthly basis.
** If you are not computer savy, do not open up the case to clean. Take it to a local computer shop to do. If you keep the fan area clean, you could get by with getting the inside cleaned once a year.

2) Internal clean-up
The more we use our computers, the more we 'clog' it up with files, bookmarks, temporary files, etc. Here are my suggestions:
a) Have a good anti-virus software running on a scheduled basis. This software should retrieve updates from the manufacturer in order to keep your computer guarded against recently released viruses.
b) Regularly remove your temporary Internet files.
c) Consider archiving files you want to keep but rarely use to an external device. For instance....If you have a lot of pictures on your machine, consider getting an external hard drive or a flash drive to keep to archive those files.
d) Remove files that you have not/will not use. We all download files that we have never used.... or have not used in years. Get rid of them ..... make room for more quilting stuff. ;-)
e) Last, but certainly not least..... Defrag your computer at least twice a year. To explain..... when we 'delete' files off our computer.... the file may be removed; however, the space that was allocated for that file is a distinct location and size on your computer. As an analogy we quilters can understand.... I will use an example of our fabric stash..... Say our stash is all nicely organized on shelves by the whatever method works best for you. Say we completely use 3 of those fabrics for a new quilt. Each of the 3 fabrics come from various areas within our stash. We would simply move the surrounding fabric pieces closer together to take up the empty space from the used up fabric. But not our computers..... our computers look at it differently and will even split files to fill up empty spaces here and there (if we have not defraged). This can cause the computer to have to work really, really hard to retrieve a file.... cause it has to go to various places to put it back together. NOW for the good news ---- if you defrag your computer (should be done after a clean up of files)..... it will move all your files together (like we do our stash) and will leave the open space at beginning or end to store your newly saved files and it will not have to go to multiple places to get one single file.

goodness.... I certainly got long winded on that one... but I hope it is helpful. I work in the computer industry and am passionate about my work. ;-) Feel free to PM me if you have further questions.

Happy quilting everyone!

my computer guy took off the cover and cleaned all kinds of dust bunnies out of mine

I've been told to vacuum and not use compressed air. Blowing can force dust in more instead of getting it out and the moisture as mentioned by BluegrassGurl.

You also have to worry about static when working on the inside to do a clean up. For many years, I installed computers, including cleaning, adding hardware, chips, etc. If you don't know what you are doing, you can do more damage than you would ever believe so please take it to a professional. It is worth the money!

I think, with my limited computer knowledge, I should take it to a professional for cleaning.
Thanks to all who tried to explain.