Computer Hysteria:   "Compulove"        by Berry F. Phillips   May 2005       "In the Spring a young man's fancy turns to thoughts of love," wrote the English poet, Alfred Lord Tennyson. However, in the Computer Hysteria Column, a kind of technical Twilight Zone, that phrase would be transformed into "in the Spring, a compuuser's fancy turns to thoughts of "compulove."       Computer users should make mad passionate love to their computers all year by performing regular maintenance. Spring cleaning should include vacuuming the computer case, the monitor enclosure, and the computer keyboard (with your system turned off). Clean your monitor screen and keyboard with isopropyl alcohol. Use computer cleaning devices for your floppy and CD player (available from most computer parts suppliers) In the Spring, I remove my CPU housing and blow out the insides of my computer system with compressed or forced air. Computers perform best in a clean, temperature-controlled environment anywhere from 65 degrees to 85 degrees Fahrenheit.       A visual inspection of exposed computer cables should be made periodically to make sure there is not physical damage and to insure they are firmly connected. During startup, watch your monitor and listen for normal startup noises on your system. During shutdown, make sure you close all running programs (and disk files that may be open) and then shutdown the entire system properly.       Hard drive maintenance is essential to the health of your system. Make sure you have a good registry cleaner, unnecessary files cleaner, spyware cleaners, an antivirus program and a firewall. Make sure they all are regularly updated to perform well in the ever evolving Internet. There are many excellent commercial software programs to perform these tasks; however, with a minimum of surfing online you can find numerous freeware and shareware programs that will perform very well. Since I have been accused at times of being frugal or rather cheap, I gravitate to freeware programs!       I perform updates and do routine maintenance with my software programs weekly, culminating with checking my defragment program. I also run scandisk or disk check monthly. Remember if you have critical data on your system be sure to back it up. Even the best tech has trouble recovering data after a crash unless the user has performed regular backups. I have done my best to keep you from suffering from a "compudivorce." Beware of Spring fever and show your "compulove".     Berry Phillips is a member of the CCOKC and a regular writer for the CCOKC website and the eMonitor