Tips for Windows XP

Delete old restore points to gain some free space?

The “System Restore” feature in Windows XP works perfectly fine for most of us. But the over cautious nature of the feature does result in a lot of storage space being occupied by the system restore files. If you would only like to have the latest restore point and not all the restore points that have been created, you can delete all the previous restore points and free some space. Follow the instructions to learn how to clean up the old redundant restore points. Open “My Computer” and right click on the drive whose restore points you want to clear. select” Properties” and under the “General” tab, click on “Disk Cleanup”. Click on “More Options” tab and select the last option “Cleanup” under the “System Restore” section. You will be asked if you want to delete all but the most recent restore points, click on “Yes” to delete all leaving the most recent of system restore points.

Clean the Prefetch folder

Windows XP’s new feature called “Prefetch” keeps a shortcut to recently used programs. But it can get filled up with old and obsolete programs and in turn can actually slow down the proceedings. Here is a way in which you can clear/clean the “Prefetch” folder so that it’s updated with only the latest and most used programs. To clean the “Prefetch” folder, go to: Go to “Start | Run”. Type the word “Prefetch” in the space and click on “OK”. Press “Ctrl-A” to highlight all the files. Delete them to empty the folder.

Change the drive letter of hard drive?

On adding a new drive to the system after Windows XP is installed, the drive letters of the new partition succeed that of the optical drive. If you’re used to having the optical drive’s letter last in the list under ‘My Computer’, you need to interchange the drive letters. Here’s how you do it: Disable the optical drive before you precede to interchange the drive letters. If the optical drive is active, you won’t be able to interchange the drive letters of the new hard disk and the optical drive. Right click on ‘My Computer’ and select ‘Properties’. Under the ‘System properties’ dialog box, click on the ‘Hardware’ tab. Bring up the ‘Device Manager’. Expand the heading ‘DVD/CD-ROM’ drives. Right click on the listed optical drives and disable them. Exit the ‘Device manager’. Now, interchange the drive letters. Right click on “My Computer” and select “Manage” from the context menu to bring up “Computer Management”. Select “Disk management” under the heading “Storage”. All the existing partitions will get listed in the right pane. Right click on the drive letter you wish to change and select the option “Change Drive Letter and Paths”. Click on the “Change” button in the next dialog box and choose the new drive letter from the drop down list. Since you disabled the optical drive, you will now get the option to assign the drive letter previously assigned to it. Click on “OK” and exit the “Computer Management” application. Now, enable the optical drives you had disabled. Head back to the “Device Manager” and enable optical drives. Job done! Go to “My Computer” and check the drive listing.

2 | Windows