What is preventive maintance?

Answer 1

"Preventative maintenance" refers to taking steps to help keep something working like it's supposed to work BEFORE something goes wrong with it. E.g., changing the oil in your car every 3,000 miles is considered "preventative maintenance" in that it helps ensure you engine will continue to perform as it is supposed to. Usually, performing preventative maintenance is far less expensive than having to pay to repair whatever it is the preventative maintenance addresses. Using our above oil example, it's a whole lot cheaper to replace the oil in your car every 3,000 miles than it is to replace the engine because you never changed the oil (not changing the old would likely cause all kinds of problems with the [very expensive] engine).

The above definition and example can be extended into the computer world as well. There's not a lot of PHYSICAL (i.e, hands-on) preventative maintenance to perform on today's computers and laptops, but there are a few. Perhaps the most important are keeping the keyboard and touch pad clean, and, if you use your CD/DVD player/s a lot, using a good commercial CD/DVD cleaner kit to keep it/them clean as well. NOT keeping those items clean can lead to failures. Also, if you have a touch-sensitive screen on any computing device you use, you will need to be sure to follow the manufacturer's preventative maintenance instructions.

The whole question of "preventative maintenance" at the software and operating system levels is a bit trickier to define, but in general, it follows the definition above. For example, you might install a program whose job is to run in the background (i.e., you don't even know it's running -- kind of like s silent sentry on duty 24/7) and keep your computer running smoothly by monitoring/repairing software and OS issues that arise in the day-to-day use of your computer, allowing you to decide whether to repair them, or letting the program repair issues on-the-fly.

Finally, if you have a desktop computer, making sure you keep the fan free of dust is a preventative maintenance item that can help keep the insides of the computer from getting too hot, which could cause a failure of one or more hardware components.

Answer 2

Preventive maintenance can prevent certain computer problems from occuring in the first place. The more preventive maintenance work you do initially, the fewer problems you are likely to have later, and the less troubleshooting and repair you will have to do.