Cables or Spaghetti?

With just 5 days to go to the start of spring, the snow has cleared away for now but its pouring with rain and, last night, the forecast was gale force winds.  

My suggestion for spring cleaning today... it's for desktops mostly.  Look behind your screen and down the back of the box.  Are your cables all neat and tidy?  Or does it look like a pile of spaghetti all twisted and tangled?  That is todays suggestion.

There are two ways to approach this:

1. Pull all the cables out of the back of the box untangle them and put them all back in place.  This works very well, unless you have no idea where all the cables go back to!
   
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2. Turn off the PC is step one.  Take out the top cable which is likely to be your power cable.  Leaving all the others in place, untangle this cable from the others.  Plug it back in to the same place as you took it out from.   Go to the next one down these might be USB cables.  Unplug them from the back of the box.  Chase them back through the tangle until they are free.  Now plug them back in.  Next take out the network cable, remembering to push the clip down.  Untangle and plug it back in.  Things should be looking a lot neater by now.  Your monitor cable may have screws on each side, unscrew them - untangle - put the cable back in.  The screws only need to be hand tight.  Speakers are usually colour coded to the port on the PC but it is sometimes awkward to see without a light, a mirror and a pulled muscle in your neck and a bash on the head from the underside of your desk!  

Once all the cables are nice and neatly arranged, the next (optional) step is to wave the hoover around the cables to get rid of the dust.  

Finally, switch on the PC.