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Check
out your C:\TEMP or C:\WINDOWS\TEMP directories
periodically. Files in this folder can often -- but not
always -- be deleted.
Never delete files with a date later
than the last time you shut the computer down -- a good rule
of thumb is if the file is over a week old, and you've
restarted your computer more recently than that, then delete em. Users who turn off their computers without going through
the shutdown procedure accumulate gobs of temporary files.
Lose 'em, after you shut down all your other
programs. One way to frequently clean out your TEMP folder
is to add the line DEL C:\WINDOWS\TEMP\*.TMP>NU1 to your
AUTOEXEC.BAT file (open AUTOEXEC.BAT in Notepad and make the
changes there). Or add a line to your Start Menu Programs
listing by right-clicking the taskbar, selecting Properties,
clicking the Start Menu Programs tab, and the Add button. In
the Command line, enter DELTREE /Y C:\WINDOWS\TEMP\ and
click OK. Accept the defaults for the rest of the process.
Once you're out, select Start, Programs, Startup,
right-click "DELTREE," and select Properties. (Win 95 users,
right-click Start, select Explore, navigate to the
Programs/Startup folder, right-click DELTREE, and select
Properties.) Click the "Program" tab, click "Close on exit,"
and click OK. Note: This procedure works, but if run from
AUTOEXEC, could delete the files before WININIT.EXE
has run, doing damage to your machine. Better to run this
from your Start Menu and avoid the potential for disaster.
(Thanks to R.M. Duncan, a Microsoft MVP, for pointing this
out to me.)
A
glitch in Windows Millennium (and exacerbated by Norton
System Doctor) can create thousands of zero-byte .INF and .CPY
files, all of which take up valuable system real estate and
cause trouble with installation of other programs. Many of
them have file names similar to OEM#####.INF. Find them by
hunting for OEM*.INF in your hard drives and deletes all the
zero-byte ones. A Knowledge Base article at
support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=KB;EN-US;q281967&
gives you more info.
Clean
out your Internet browser (or browsers) cache and history
files frequently. The new versions of Windows have something
called a Disk Cleanup Wizard that claims to handle this task
for you, but it doesn't do much of a job. Handle it
yourself. Need pointers? A later page of my site has
instructions on cleaning browser caches.
Although
the Disk Cleanup Wizard doesn't handle browser caches
particularly well, it does a better job with cleaning up
other temporary files. Use it as a part of your regular
maintenance routine; just don't think that it does the job
on its own. You still have to scrub the virtual baseboards
yourself. Its basic categories of Temporary Internet Files,
Downloaded Program Files, Temporary Files, and Recycle Bin,
are relatively self-explanatory and can usually be emptied
with little forethought (except for the Recycle Bin, if you
want to be doubly careful). The More Options tab uses the
Add/Remove applet under Control Panel to hunt for other
files that may not be of use.
Go
through your computer and hunt out programs that you haven't
used lately. Decide whether or not you need those programs
to stay on your hard drive. Win 98/ME users; be aware that
you have two large and possibly worthless files -- 30MB of
Desktop Themes and 31MB of WebTV for Windows. These can
easily be deleted to save space.
Millennium
users, you have a glitch that works hand-in-hand with Norton
System Doctor to strew useless, zero-byte .INF and .CPY
files throughout your hard drive. Both Microsoft and
Symantec recommend hunting these files down and
exterminating them. Find out more from Microsoft's Knowledge
Base article at support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;q281967.
MS
Office users tend to accumulate lots of unnecessary files
beginning in _OFIDX or FFASTUN. These are indexes from
Office's Fast Find feature (from Office 7.0 and Office 97,
respectively). You can delete them, but Office will just
recreate them. To stop Office from creating them, remove
Fast Find from the Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Startup
folder; you will, however, find that text searches are
slower.
Some
of us end up with half a hundred unused screen savers
clogging up our machines. That dancing baby was cute five
years ago, but who wants to see him now? Sometimes screen
savers can be deleted by going through the Add/Remove applet
in Control Panel, but most don't give that option. To hunt
down unwanted screen savers, open the Windows/System folder
and look for the corresponding *.scr file. (Switch to
Details mode and click the Type column heading, so that all
*.scr files appear together.) Ditch that file and the screen
saver is gone for good.
Windows
XP includes an uninstall utility that makes it simple to
remove unneeded or obsolete versions of a program. To
uninstall a program installed with Windows XP, follow these
steps. First, click the Start button and then click Control
Panel to open the Control Panel window. In the Category view
where you see a list of Control panel categories, click the
Add or Remove Programs hyperlink to open the Add or Remove
Programs dialog box. In the Classic view where you see
individual Control panel icons, double-click the Add or
Remove Programs icon. Click the Change or Remove Programs
button on the left side of the Add or Remove dialog box to
display the Currently Installed Programs list box. Click the
program you want to remove in the Currently Installed
Programs list box (when you click a program name, the
description expands to include a Change/Remove button or
separate Change and Remove buttons). Click the Change/Remove
button or the Remove button if Change and Remove are
separate. Click the OK button in the alert dialog box that
appears to confirm your removal of the program. When the
Uninstaller finishes removing the program, click the Close
button to close the Add or Remove Programs dialog box and to
return to the Control Panel window. Use the Windows XP
uninstaller to get rid of any unwanted program that you've
installed with the Add or Remove Programs Control Panel.
Using this utility to remove a program (rather than just
deleting the program folder) ensures that all vestiges of
the program are removed from the system and that you get
back every byte of storage space to which you're entitled.
Okay,
you've deleted a file, or a bunch of files, and you want
them back. Windows won't give you much recourse in the
programs bundled with the system, but in many cases, you can
get those deleted files back. Files that you delete aren't
really deleted until the system overwrites the physical data
on the hard drive; depending on what you do with your
computer, these files may be available for hours, days, or
even weeks and months later. When you first delete a file,
Windows simply removes your access to the file. The first
thing to do once you realize you've deleted a file that you
want back is to stop using your computer. Don't save
anything, don't turn it off, and don't even install a
recovery program (yet) because you don't want the file to be
overwritten. If you're going to use a recovery program, run
it from a disk. If you delete a file to the Recycle Bin, the
first thing to do is to go into the Bin and see if the file
is still there. If it is, just right-click and restore it.
That's not always going to be an option, but don't give up
yet. You'll probably want to use a recovery program. Several
are available, none for free, but if you want the data,
you'll want to spend the bucks.
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