CLEAN XP

Speed up your XP

During the course of normal computer usage, there are several opportunities where your hard disk can get progressively filled with unnecessary programs and fragments of files that are remnants of your Web browsing and application installations. All this system junk will certainly slow down your computer. There are several areas from where you can weed out all this junk and keep your system spiffy clean. First, get rid of all the extraneous files on your hard disks that might have been left by old program installations, Internet browsing, deleted files etc. Go to Start | Run and type “cleanmgr /sageset:99”. This opens up the Disk Cleanup Wizard. This little application lets you select one of many areas of your Windows XP installation and safely deletes files that clutter your hard disk. Some of the sections include offline web pages, temporary setup files, log files, etc. There’s nothing to stop you from selecting all of these categories and hitting the [OK] button. However, there might be instances where you might want to keep your Internet cache, for example, to take advantage of better load times while browsing your favorite web sites. If you don’t really want to do so, go ahead and check all of these areas and Windows will proceed to remove all of these files, leading to a cleaner (and faster) system. There are other ways you can optimize the space allocations of common Windows resources such as the System Restore Points and the Recycle Bin. Both of these are notorious for allocating enormous amounts of hard disk space that can otherwise be put to more productive use. By default, Windows allots 10 percent of the volume space to the recycle bin—that’s 4 GB from a 40 GB hard disk! Reduce this by right-clicking on the Recycle Bin, selecting properties and swinging down the slider to 3 percent or less. Similarly, with the System Restore Points, right click on [My Computer] in Windows Explorer, choose Properties and drag this down to three percent or less. There, you’ve now recovered several gigabytes of space on your hard disk.

2 | Windows XP