Clean the mean Machine

Last week my machine had a crash.Windows locked up, and i got a bluescreen at restart. No need to say this made me slightly uncomfortable, as last time it did such thing i lost a 1 TB HDD with 25 sims and all backups. Since the bluescreen just flashed ( no chance to read it ), safe mode wouldn't work, and resetting BIOS to default didn't help too much either, i figured to open up the casing and see how things were.

I opened the sidepanel, and found a dead cat... or something hairy dusty and filthy.
So i disconnected all, took all the drives RAM and cards out, and had fun for an hour with some swabs, an old toothbrush (very handy), a can of sprayduster and the vacuum cleaner. Geez the thing was Nasty.
After I reconnected all cabling and re-inserted the RAM and all cards, the bluescreen was no longer there. Good fix, although it took a while.

Anyways, my tip of the day to keep your simulators up and running : If you never opened your casing in the last 3-6  months, you might want to consider doing the same. With warmer weather coming, it's not a bad idea to cleanout your machine a bit. Mine is almost 17 degrees cooler, now the fans generate airflow rather than dustflow.

I know it's a dirty job, but it gets worse if you wait. Go give your machine some love, so it can keep serving you, and me, and all others in the metaverse.