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Keep Your Windows XP Computer Running Smooth With Two Built-in
Tools
To keep a PC running smoothly, regular maintenance is critical.
Many users shy away from maintenance tasks, thinking it is
difficult, but the Disk Cleanup Utility can easily determine
which files on a hard drive may no longer be needed and delete
those files. In addition to freeing up potentially significant
amounts of hard drive space, using Disk Cleanup on a regular
basis can significantly improve system performance. It is
available on both Home and Professional versions of XP.
To access the utility:
Click Start | Programs | Accessories | System Tools
| Disk Cleanup.
A Select Drive window will appear. Use the drop down menu
arrow to select the drive you want to clean and click [OK].
Disk Cleanup will analyze the selected drive to determine
the amount of space that can be freed. Note: Be patient. Analyzing
the drive can be a semi-lengthy process depending on drive
size and contents.
Once the drive analysis is complete a window list of file
categories will be presented for your selection. Now, instead
of automatically proceeding with cleanup once the drive analysis
is complete, Disk Cleanup allows you to review the categories
of files that can be deleted. Click on any of the categories
to display more information relative to that category in the
Description section of the window. Most of the time, all files
pre-selected are safe to delete. After all the categories
have been reviewed make sure the box next to each is checked
and click [OK] to begin the disk cleanup process.
There are a number of different types of file categories
that Disk Cleanup targets when it performs the initial disk
analysis. Depending on the individual system, you may or may
not have all the categories listed below. An excellent example
of this would be Backup Files from a Previous Operating System.
If a clean install of XP was performed then this category
will not exist. It pays to click on each of the categories
and note that the [View Files] button can change depending
on the category selected.
File Categories
Download Program Files - These are ActiveX
controls and Java applets automatically downloaded from Web
sites as you use the Internet. They are temporarily stored
in the Downloaded Program Files folder. The files listed here
are not data files that you have personally downloaded from
the web. Clean these out on a regular basis.
Temporary Internet Files - This refers to
Internet Explorer's cache of Web pages that are stored on
the hard drive for quicker viewing as you use features like
the Back button in explorer. None of your personal web settings
are affected by selecting this category, nor does it delete
any cookie files. Clean out on a regular basis.
Recycle Bin - This category only refers
to the Recycle Bin for the selected hard drive on your computer.
Empty it on a regular basis.
Setup Log Files - These are really pretty
useless unless you have a specific reason to go back and see
what occurred during XP setup. Clean out.
Backup Files For Previous Operating System
- You will not have this category if your PC came with XP,
but if you did upgrade from a previous Windows version and
selected the option to be able to uninstall XP, it may well
exist. It takes some major hard drive space to copy all the
files necessary to back up a previous system's core files,
drivers, etc. Unless you are considering removing XP this
is a good category to select and clean out.
Offline Files - Users with slower dialup
connections will have this category if they make websites
available offline. Depending on how many levels deep you save
the sites, they can eat up gigabytes of hard drive space very
quickly. Worse than taking up space, the sites often contain
outdated information. A good candidate for deletion.
Compress Old Files - Unlike the other categories,
Compress Old Files doesn't delete any files from the drive.
It compresses files that Windows hasn't accessed for a specified
period of time. The files are still available, but there will
be a slight increase in access times because the files will
be decompressed the next time they are needed.
( More Options Tab )
In addition to the categories that appear on the Disk Cleanup
tab, the More Options tab offers additional opportunities
for freeing up hard drive real estate. These selections deal
with program files and services in the Windows operating system.
Do not use these options without consulting a network administrator.
Using Disk Cleanup will almost certainly rid your system
of a substantial amount of unneeded files. You could stop
here and not suffer any ill consequences, but there are a
lot of gaps and empty spaces on the hard drive where the files
were removed. This would be an excellent time to run Disk
Defragmenter to organize the hard drive into contiguous sections.
By having these contiguous sections, the hard drive will spend
less time seeking all of the pieces of a file and you'll see
another performance boost.
Disk Defragmenter
This system tool can be accessed in the same area as the
disk cleanup utility:
Click Start | Programs | Accessories | System Tools
| Disk Defragmenter.
Once open, you will again choose the local C: drive of your
computer and then click the Defragment button. The utility
will run for at least 20 minutes, so it is best to start this
process when you can be away from your computer for a period
of time.
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