Periodic Maintenance and House Cleaning

Even though Win-98 does not suffer from the growing pains that Win-95 did, you still need to keep up with house cleaning and maintenance. Part of this is due to the way the PC works. Most people understand that their programs reside on there Hard Drive. However, Surprise surprise! When your PC is using a program, instead of just "reading" as they call it. It is actually removing it from your Hard Drive. That would not be a problem if it put it back where it was when it was finished with it. But NOoooo! It puts it where it wants to at the time. Not to worry though! it keeps track of where it puts things even if they are scattered all over the place. Duh! The word "scatter" sounds disorganized. Computer logic tells them to correct this, So they change the term to "Fragmented". This doesn't sound so disorganized.

After using your PC for some time it starts acting sluggish. After doing the laundry if you were to put one sock in each draw in the kitchen, dining room, bath and bedroom. Then went back later trying to match up a pair, you would be sluggish too. Not to worry though. Microsoft in it's infinite wisdom has included a little program to gather up all the socks, sort them into pairs and put them all in one draw. But, you knew this because Microsoft told you all about this when you bought Windows. Right?

They appropriately call this "Defrag". It takes some time to do this but just so you won't get bored, they gave you an option to watch a visual rendition of the process actually working. Neeto! I enjoyed it so much I ran next door to invite my neighbor and his wife and kids to come over and watch with me. We had chips, dip and drinks and made a party out of it. Their kids cheered when the last few black blocks went into place. The blocks are color coded so you can tell what is happening to what.

Actually, "Scan disk" should be done first. Scan disk has two options, one is called: "Standard" and the other is "Thorough". The Standard scan disk takes a little time but not too long. That is probably why they did not supply a visual rendition of what is happening. You will have to find your own entertainment here. You can schedule scan disk and defrag to operate at night while you sleep. If you choose "thorough" you will wish that you did, because it is painfully long. It is not long because of the size of your Hard Drive. It is long because of all the junk you have on it. Same with Defrag. If you have partitioned your hard drive, you can do one partition at a time or have it do all of them in succession. If you don't use the proper method of shut down, Win-98 will automatically run Scan disk when you boot up. That's neet, A small step for self correction and a giant leap toward an OS the works more times than not.

Another tool to clean up with is: "Disk Cleanup" found in, Start/Programs/Accessories/System Tools/Disk Clean up. This program will show you several places that have acumulated junk that can be cleaned out and it will show you how much is in each. One of these is another item we will cover, "Recycle Bin".

If you have an Internet connection and use MS Internet Explorer, then you should at times go clean out some folders in Windows Explorer called: "History". Another in Windows Explorer/C:/windows/Temporary Internet Files. These are a combination of stuff. Some are "Cookies" (These Cookies neither taste good nor are they for your benifit.) Supposidly, they give info back to a site when you visit it the next time. I don't know who (if anyone) is controlling what kind of info these people are or can get back. Many sites refuse or make it difficult to access their site unless you accept their "cookie". They use several different methods to attempt to trick you into accepting it. This alone should make you suspisious of their motives. If you look in windows explorer/C:/windows/Cookies you will find more of them. It will not take long on the Internet to acumulate these cookies in a large number.

Some files in Temporary Internet files will make it quicker to open that site the next time you visit it. So, if you have a favorite site that you visit often, you should ID that file and don't delete it when cleaning up.

Another place to do house cleaning is in Windows Explorer/C:/windows/temp. In here you should look at the date on the file. If it is a week or so old and you have been using your PC a lot, more than likely you can delete it. This "temp" folder is used as a temp folder for many programs including Win-98 but most never come back to clean up their junk.

"Regclean"

If you have installed programs then Uninstalled them or deleted them, most likely they have left some junk in your registry. The small program "Regclean" can clean out some stuff you may never see that is left over from the deleted program.

I know! you haven't had anything in Red to do yet. Just info. OK, we will let you do smething.

Go to: Start/Programs/Windows Explorer/Windows/Cookies. Any cookies you have in here can be deleted unless you know that it is from a site you don't mind them monitoring you.

Next, Go to: History. This is a list of the URL addresses you went to when on the net. I know what you are thinking if you have a teenage son in the family.

Continue on down to: Temporary Internet Files. Here you will find more cookies and long lines of files. If you recognize some as friendly sites that you trust and want to leave them, their site will be quicker to access if you leave it in. Do you remember how to selectively highlight several files that are not in a row? Hold down the "ctrl" key as you select each folder then right click the file with the dotted line around it to get the pop up menu so you can delete. Don't forget to empty the Recycle Bin when you are finished.