Preventative Maintenance

Preventative maintenance is work you perform to prevent future problems from occurring. Preventative maintenance could include:

• Vacuuming the interior of a desktop PC for dust
• Replacing frayed or old cables
• Hardware driver updates
• Firmware updates
• Cleaning equipment
• Software updates
• Hard drive defragmentation
• Microsoft Windows Security updates
• Antivirus software updates
• Mouse trackball cleaning
• Keyboard cleaning

These are just some of the examples of preventative maintenance you can perform on computer equipment you service.

For the exam, you should be aware that you should schedule preventative maintenance for machines you work with. This maintenance could include any number of the tasks we discussed above, but commonly include cleaning and software updates.

When you do perform preventative maintenance, you should only use approved cleaning solutions and materials, such as canned air for cleaning our keyboards or monitor wipes for cleaning monitors. Preventative maintenance should occur in a static free environment with the technician using ESD straps to prevent electrostatic discharge which will ruin electronic equipment.