January, being the beginning of the new year, is also the month when people clear out the old junk and prepare to start anew. Everyone makes their resolutions to be healthier, to exercise and eat right, to organize their lives better. I read in the paper today that January is officially the National Clean Up Your Computer Month, so how many people have made resolutions regarding the health of their computers?

So, this month as part of LOPSA's mission "to serve the public through outreach and education on system administration issues", help someone (and help yourself) clean up a computer system.

Some ideas of people or groups you can help:
* Yourself, obviously, since it is "Clean Up Your Computer Month"
* Your family, we all have the family member who is afraid of their computer and comes to us for help. Get a jumpstart, and maybe save yourself a frantic call down the road.
* Your neighbors, same idea.
* Your church
* Your (or your kid's) school
* A favorite charity or non-profit
* A small business you frequent that probably doesn't have and can't afford a full time or even retained service provider
* The large company you work for. We all know there are things we can do to clean up the networks we work on, but they tend to get lost under the new workload. Make some special time this month.

Some things you can do:
* For a Microsoft Windows based system, run a registry cleaner
* Install an anti-spam program
* Install anti-spyware
* Install anti-virus software
* Install other security tools
* Install patches
* Organize your documents; delete ones you no longer need
* Install the latest updates for your software or drivers
* Delete old log files, tune your logger to only log what you need
* Physically clean your computer. If you are comfortable doing so (and won't void a warranty), open it up and blow out dust. Even if you aren't comfortable opening it up, a lot of times dust builds up on the air ducts and fan intakes, and you can make your computer run much better simply by cleaning those¹

You could start a recycling drive or collect old computers from your neighbors (all the ones who bought new computers for Christmas) and deliver them to a computer recycler (like a FreeGeek).

Can you think of any really creative ideas? Just for the fun of it, when you do one of these types of things, blog about it here (you can do a comment or a full blog post), and mention "Clean Up Your Computer Month" in the title.

¹ I once worked with a very large Sun Enterprise 2000 system that I was told crashed every couple of days. No matter what the operators did, it would randomly crash and was never up for more than 72 hours. I opened the front bezels and found a one inch thick layer of dust covering the entire front and completely choking off the airflow. Once I cleared that (and made a habit of ensuring it was cleaned weekly), the system ran rock stable for 4 months until we decommissioned it and moved to a whole new building.

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