maintenance keyboard

When it comes to cleaning your keyboard there are many methods that can be used, some harder and more effective than others.

The easiest method is the Shake Method. It is so easy that you can do it right now. Pick up your keyboard, turn it over being careful not to press any keys, and shake it. See all of that stuff fall out? It is dirtier than you thought, isn't it? You can use one of the following methods to clean it further.

The Blow Method - You can buy cans of pressurized air at the computer department or computer store which are made especially for cleaning your computer. They usually have either a hose and nozzle or a tube extending from the nozzle. Hold the keyboard up vertically (that means that end of the keyboard is up and the other end is down), aim towards the keys and press the button. Keep blowing until all of the debris is blown out. Be sure to get around and in between all of the keys. This can be done with the computer on, but it is better if it is off so that you do not have to worry about pressing the keys and coming up with a page of aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa's.

The Vacuum Method - This is just like the Blow Method except that a vacuum is used instead of a can of pressurized air. It is quite simple. Just turn the vacuum on, pull out the hose, and run the nozzle over the keys. Before doing this make sure your keyboard does not have any loose pop off keys that could be sucked into the vacuum.

The Cotton Ball Method - This can be done in addition to the above methods and in lieu of the following methods. Take a cotton ball or cloth and wet it with rubbing alcohol. It should not be so wet that the alcohol runs down into the cracks of the keyboard. Wipe the tops and sides of the keys.

The Dishwasher Method - I hesitate to tell about this method because there is the possibility that it could fry your keyboard. When I had less experience with computers, I dunked my keyboard in a sink full of water to clean it. It did work afterwards, so I don't doubt those who say this method will not mess up your keyboard, but if it does, don't complain to me. I warned you. If your keyboard is not the standard membrane type of keyboard or if it is on a laptop, do not even think of trying this.

This is how you do it. Unplug the keyboard and place it face down in an empty dishwasher. Do not disassemble the keyboard and do not put it in a dishwasher that has dirty dishes in it. Some say to add soap, some say not to. Run the dishwasher through a regular cycle. Take the keyboard out, shake the water out, and stand it on end until it is completely dry (this may take several days). If it does not work after doing this, it may not be dry. Let it stand another week and try it again. If it still does not work, I warned you.

The Disassembly Method - This is the most thorough method, but it should not be done on laptop keyboards or non-standard non-membrane keyboards.

Turn off the computer and unplug the keyboard. Turn the keyboard upside down. You may want to get two books or short boards to place the keyboard on. Position them so that they hold up the keyboard on the edges when it is turned over. This should leave the keys dangling and not touching the books or the floor. This is especially needed when the keyboard's back is off; otherwise the keys will be lifted out of their position by the floor (or whatever surface it is laying on).

Get a screwdriver and remove all of the screws from the back of the keyboard. Lay the keyboard down on the books and carefully remove the back.

Take everything apart and clean thoroughly. It is better to take the keys out one at a time and clean them so that you do not put them back in the wrong place. Wipe each one down with a wet cloth and then with a dry cloth. Any keys that may be hard to put back in, can be cleaned in place without removing them. Wipe around the keys as they sit in place and blow any debris out with your lungs (using compressed air or a vacuum may upset the keys). If you are really brave, you can remove all of the keys at once and give the frame a good wipe down too.

Do a once over and make sure that you have cleaned everything. Then reassemble it all.

Don't forget the keyboard's cable. Wrap a wet cloth around it and wipe it down. It may have an accumulation of grime that needs to be scrubbed off. Also if any of the letters on the keys have rubbed off, you can use a fine point permanent marker to draw the letter back on the key.

Use these cleaning methods and your keyboard will last a long time and be something you can be proud of.

How to Clean your Mouse

If your mouse is working sluggishly or not at all, don't go out and buy another cheap mouse. The cause is probably just a dirty mouse. A quick cleaning could fix the problem.

First, you need to identify which kind of mouse you have. If you turn your mouse over and part of a ball is showing, you have a ball mouse. If you see a lens, you have an optical or laser mouse. Each type of mouse requires a different type of cleaning.

The optical or laser mouse does not need to be cleaned near as often as the ball mouse, but it and the surface it runs on can still get dirty. If you do not clean the surface that the mouse moves on, it will soon turn black. So about once a month or so, wipe the surface off with a wet rag. The lens probably never will get dirty, but if it does, take a soft cloth, cotton swab, or q-tip wetted with window cleaner or alcohol and clean the lens.

The ball mouse may need cleaning quite often, so you should get well acquainted with the following cleaning procedure. The dirtier the ball mouse gets, the harder it is to get it to move the cursor on the screen smoothly. If you have to move the mouse across the mouse pad several times to get the cursor to move halfway across the screen, it needs to be cleaned.

The mouse does not need to be disconnected to clean it, but you should close all of the programs that are running, so that you don't accidentally click on something and mess it up. If you do decide to disconnect the mouse, be sure to turn off the computer first. The mouse cord should never be unplugged from the computer while it is running. Doing so could ruin your motherboard.

Turn the ball mouse over and find the cover that holds the ball in. Look for arrows on the cover to show which way it needs to be turned. Place two fingers on the cover and push in the direction of the arrows. Once the cover has been turned about an inch, cover it with your hand and turn the mouse back over to the upright position. The ball and cover should fall into your hand. If it doesn't, shake the mouse gently.

Wipe the ball off with a wet rag.

Now look in the ball well and find the three rollers. Start by cutting across the buildup on the rollers with your fingernail (a knife or steel dental pick may also be used gently), then turn the roller and remove the buildup as you go along. If you do this correctly, you will end up with one curled strip of buildup for each roller. Make sure to remove the buildup from the well. If it falls inside somewhere, blow and gently shake it until it comes out.

Take a wet rag and clean each of the rollers by wiping across it, then turning it and wiping again. Continue until the entire roller is cleaned. Put the ball back in the ball well and lock the cover back in place.

If the mouse still has problems once it is assembled, try cleaning it again. If that doesn't work, you may need to buy a new mouse.

It is a good idea to regularly clean the surface that the mouse is on because the cleaner the surface, the less dirt will get inside the mouse and the less often you will have to clean it.

If your mouse is shared by many people (especially if one of them is sick), you may want to disinfect the top of the mouse between users.

Follow these instructions and your mouse will be up and darting again in no time.

How to Clean the Registry

In the beginning Windows' registry consisted of two files totalling around 5mb in size. Today it consists of at least 12 files with the Software file itself being 30mb or bigger in size. As the size of the registry has exploded, so has the trash and clutter in it. It may seem like a daunting task, but cleaning the registry properly can fix system problems, speed your computer up, and make it run more efficiently.

I have spent many years developing and refining thousands of procedures to do just that. I could share these methods of hunting down the trash with you and let you find them and delete them by hand, but if you were to sit down at your computer right now and work nonstop, you would still be busy with them a week from now when the next issue of Ray's Computer Tips arrives. By then your registry would have new clutter and you would have to start all over again.

To make registry cleaning easier on everyone, I wrote a program called RegVac Registry Cleaner (http://regvac.com/regvac.htm) to perform those procedures. It has been so successful that several companies have asked me to model their registry cleaners after RegVac and even more have copied processes that first debutted in RegVac.

The first place RegVac cleans is the HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT section (the Classes Vac in RegVac does this). This section contains settings for the classes of Windows. Think of a huge box full of snakes and you will get an idea of how complicated and interwoven it is. It is so complicated that many registry cleaners bypass it or simply perform surface scans of it. RegVac uses over a hundred processes to follow each tentacle of each class deep into this area and make sure that they abide by the rules.

Next RegVac validates the entries in 22 lists with 7 different methods (the FilesList Vac does this). This is a minor part of RegVac but the bulk of most other registry cleaners even though they usually do not clean all 22 lists.

Another part of RegVac, the Software Vac, which is unique to RegVac, finds old software sections in the registry and provides a way to remove that software's entire branch. Other registry cleaners only remove a few entries in this area often leaving huge portions of the registry that do nothing but take up space and get in the way.

Even more trash can be discovered in hundreds of stashes used to store data you will never use. Most registry cleaners do not even touch these. The Stash Vac lists these stashes and lets you go through and select which ones to empty out. Please use caution when using the Stash Vac because some of the items listed there may be important. For example, one folder in the Stash Vac lists places where data for international keyboards are stored. You probably will never use the data for Bulgarian keyboards, so you can remove it, but if you live in the US you may experience problems after removing the United States 101 keyboard. The items that you can safely remove are usually obvious.

Last but not least, when cleaning the registry, you should look for broken links to files on the computer (this is what the Bad Link Vac does). If a file is referenced in the registry but it does not exist on your hard drive, that is a good indicator that something is wrong. Many programmers start out writing a registry cleaner thinking all it has to do is check for these broken links and remove them. In fact, that is all many registry cleaners do.

Even though that is all they do, they often don't do it correctly. If you check the results of such scans, you will find out that many of the broken links are really good links. I spent several months refining this part of RegVac so that as far as I know it is 100% accurate. Despite this, please realize that some software enter broken links in the registry and require them to be there in order for them to run. RegVac skips the ones it knows about, but you still need to be careful with this part of RegVac.

RegVac has six more tools that clean even more areas: the Add/Remove Editor, the System Config Utility, the OpenWith Editor, the AutoComplete Editor, the Junk Keys Editor, and Registry Backup, Pack, and Restore.

Many of you already use RegVac but if you don't, you can downloaded a free 30 day trial of RegVac at http://regvac.com/regvacz.exe. For more information about RegVac Registry Cleaner go to http://regvac.com/regvac.htm. If you like RegVac, you can purchase it for only $29.95. All future updates are free.

Keep the Windows registry clean and running smoothly with RegVac Registry Cleaner