Chapter-4 Simple Computer Maintenance Tips

A. Defrag To Speed Up Your Computer One of maintenance things that I did was to defrag my hard drive even though Windows said I didn't need to. First, let me explain what fragmented files mean to your computer. When your computer stores a document, it starts to put the document in the first area of free space on your hard drive and then when it runs out of room there, it stores another part of the file on the next space available and so on, until the entire document is stored. One simple Word document may be stored in many different spots. When you access the fragmented document again, it has to go to all the spots on your hard drive, gather the information, put it together and then display it. If you have a lot of fragmented files it takes time for the computer to find the data. I was at 8% fragmentation which was below Windows threshold for a recommendation to defragment but after I ran the program the performance increase was very visible. The reason that I saw such an increase may be that the files that I use regularly may have been one of the few files that were fragmented. It will take a while to run defrag so you might want to leave this task for last (like before bed) and you should free up as much space as possible before defraging, but I list it first because is so important. To defrag your hard drive with Windows XP, go to:

Start Programs Accessories System Tools Disk Defragmenter

Other Windows operating systems has the disk defragementer tool in a similar location. If you can't find it, go to Windows help and search for "defrag" to find out how to run it. B. Clean Temporary Files To Speed Up Your Computer Windows loves to write files all the time to your hard drive and until you run out of room on your hard drive or ask it to clean it up, it will leave old temporary files there. Windows XP comes with a handy program that cleans them up. To clean up temporary files on your hard drive with Windows XP, go to:

Start Programs Accessories System Tools Disk Cleanup

(In Win98, StartProgramAccessorySystem toolsmtce. wizard)

For other Windows operating systems you may have manually remove temporary files. To find out how, go to Windows help and search for "temporary files". RTTC,AM 48

C. Clean Out Email Inbox To Speed Up Your Computer I was constantly getting messages that I had ran out of virtual memory. I only had two programs open and I figured out why. My friend, that I always have open Outlook Express was the culprit. It wasn't the program that was having a problem - it was my pack-rat way of life of keeping spam messages for the past two years and not deleting them. I was loading my inbox folder when I opened the program that had 15,000 messages! When I switched between folders, I could see how long it took to load all those message headers into memory - memory that could be used for something much more important. Click delete or create a folder to store them in, but clean out that inbox! D. Clean Up Your Desktop To Speed Up Your Computer My desktop on my computer was like my desk - cluttered! Having a clean desktop is important enough that Windows XP now asks you to clean up unused desktop icons. If you have always ignored the prompt like I used to, you can either clean them up manually by right clicking your mouse on them and selecting delete or you can access the Windows XP program.

Start Control Panel Double-click "Display". Click the "Desktop" tab. Click the "Customize Desktop" button at the bottom. Click the "General" tab. Click the "Clean Desktop Now" button at the bottom.

Clean out your start-up files

Nearly every program you load on your computer wants to be top dog. By that I mean when you install the program it usually sets itself up in your startup list. This means that whenever you start up your computer the programs installs itself automatically into main memory whether you are going to use it or not and just takes up valuable resources that could be better utilised by programs you are using right away. If you hit the Control-Alt-Delete keys once (if you do it twice you will reboot the computer and lose any unsaved work) you will be able to see all the programs that are running behing the scenes. The more you have running that you are not using, the more memory will be taken up and the slower and less stable the system will be. Things like Anti-Virus programs and "system tray" should be left running but many others can be removed. To do this in windows 98/ME, hit "Start"-"Run"- and type in "msconfig" and enter, then choose the right hand top tab marked "startup" Uncheck all the programs that you aren't using all the time. You will be able to run them normally at any time from your start menu so don't worry about that. Most of the programs can be identified by the program names at the right hand side,

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any that can't, you can always type it into google and see what comes up. Occasionally you find programs loaded here that are malicious programs such as Trojans or Browser hijackers that you definitely don't want. To get rid of them search for the filename in Google and then see if it comes up as a nasty and then get the info on how to remove from the anti-virus website. You will notice a definite improvement in start-up speed and general running when these are removed.

F. Uninstall any old programs that are no longer used Windows registry is the section of windows that contains all the information relating to
your system and software. As time goes by it can get extremely bloated and even if you are not using the old programs anymore, the time taken to search through registry is increased. Uninstalling the programs rather than just deleting the files will ensure that the entries in the registry are removed and this helps keep the size under control. Another little utility you might find useful is called "EasyCleaner" and it is great for cleaning out all these unwanted files and registry entries that were somehow left behind. You can also use it to locate temporary files used by various programs that just clog up your hard drive and slow things down. It's a free utility you can download from http://www.docsdownloads.com/easycleaner.htm

G. Kill the Spyware To Speed Up Your Computer Spyware seems to be almost unavoidable if you are online. I have always been very careful with keeping my virus protection up to date but I had a few spyware problems myself that was probably slowing down my computer. The basic version of AdAware is a free program that it will get rid of this annoyance. Of course you may be having more serious problems than I was experiencing but these simple tips should speed up your slow computer. Clean up any Adware and scumware Free programs on the internet are not always what they seem. Often the sting in the tail is, the behind the scenes, installing of Adware or Scumware as it's sometimes known. This usually consists of programs that run in the background and advertise various offerings which can be targeted to match your preferences. These programs take up valuable system resources and should be cleaned out. Programs such as Gator (form filler) and Kazza (music sharing) are well known examples of this but there are many others. The solution to this, is for you to download this free program: Spybot search and Destroy at http://www.safer-networking.org/en/index.html or http://www.microsoft.com H. Invest in a good antivirus program
Invest in a good antivirus program such as Shield-Antivirus or Panda anti-virus and keep it regularly updated. Having a virus on your system can not only wreak havoc with your system speed but can lead to more serious problems and data loss. You can check out Shield at:http://www.pcsandthings.com/shield-antivirus.htm and Panda at:- http://www.pcsandthings.com/panda.htm BigTime recommends Norton AntiVirus or McAfee I. Delete or uninstall unwanted fonts When Windows loads it installs all available fonts. This not only takes up space but also valuable time. Deleting or uninstalling fonts that you will never use will help streamline things a bit more.

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To view the installed fonts, select Start, Run, type "fonts", and press Enter. To see what a font looks like, double-click its icon. You can delete a font by right-clicking it and selecting Delete, but it's safer to uninstall it by dragging it to another folder so you can always drag it back if you really need it. You must do this dragging (in either direction) from within Windows Explorer. Moving or copying a font to or from the C:\Windows\Fonts folder via DOS commands or some other utility won't properly install or uninstall it. Some fonts should stay put, such as Windows system fonts, which have the extension .fon instead of .ttf. The icon for a system font has a red 'A' rather than a gray-blue 'TT'. System fonts are usually hidden files, but they're visible in the Fonts folder in Explorer. They disappear when you move them elsewhere, though. Some applications require specific fonts, such as Arial, Verdana or Times New Roman, so you'd better keep them around. Any other ones you don't use can be moved to another folder. More info on this can be found at:- http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx? scid=kb;en-us;234749 J. Optimise your system A few basic pointers for optimising your system. 1. From the desktop right click on the "my computer" icon and select properties. Select "file system" and under the hard disc tab, where it says "for typical role of this computer" select "network server" in the drop down menu as this speeds up transfers. 2. Under floppy disc make sure the little box is not ticked as this increases boot up time slightly. 3. On Internet Explorer while surfing the net, images are stored on the hard drive in a section called the cache. This is useful if you are using a slow dial-up connection as it means the most used images don't have to be continually downloaded so surfing speeds are increased. If the cache size is too great then Explorer has to check through all the images before it downloads them and this can slow up browsing. The optimum size is a bit, hit or miss, but with ADSL or cable the cache can be set much smaller as the images download quickly. Also when the cache is too large the files get fragmented (this is covered later) and the hard disk thrashes around trying to piece it all together thus slowing everything down. It's a matter of trial and error but I wouldn't recommend much more than 50MB for a slow connection and about 10MB for ADSL or Cable. Adjustment is made by clicking on Internet explorer "tools" and "internet options" then under "temporary internet files" the settings button and use the slider to adjust the amount. H.) Registry clean: software is available on Microsoft site Carrying out the above actions will help keep your PC running faster and more stable and hopefully crashing less causing you less stress and frustration from lost work. So get started now and clean up your PC and make it a habit to do it regularly and keep your system running at peak performance. And don't forget one of the most cost effective upgrades you can do to your PC at the moment is to add some more Memory (RAM). .

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