The Computer Club Newsletter

December 2002

By Ron Uncapher

The next meeting of the Tellico Village Computer User Club will be on Tuesday, January 7, 2003 at 7:00 PM. The featured speaker will be John Avery. The topic will be The Basics of "Burning" or Creating CDs with your PC. John will use two popular software programs, Nero and Roxio Easy CD Creator, to present the key features of both and to enable the user to determine the better program for their needs. The primary focus will be on the use of Roxio’s Easy CD Creator 5 and it’s new and interesting features, along with the standard features from earlier versions. John is the owner of Avery Publishing and Graphics in Vonore.

In this month’s article, I would like to discuss what to do about crowded hard drives. If your PC is much over two years old, your performance is lagging far behind that of newer PCs. However, I am not advocating that you go out and buy the latest and greatest. For most users, that is not necessary unless you are into storing music, videos, and hundreds of pictures off of your new digital camera. Those are large files that hog hard drive space and computer resources. If you are into graphics and video, you probably need a new PC. But, if your older PC is slowing down under normal home office and Internet usage, there are some simple things you can do to help speed it up.

First, get rid of old unused files and programs. If you have programs you no longer use, get rid of them by going to START*SETTINGS*CONTROL PANEL*ADD/REMOVE. Find and highlight the program you want to get rid of and click ADD/REMOVE.

After removing unused programs, go after files. First, empty the TEMP folders. Go to MY COMPUTER*LOCAL DISK:C. When Windows Explorer opens, look for a folder named TEMP. You may or may not have one there. If you find it, open it and delete all the files therein. You can delete the files by highlighting the files and click the delete key, or drag and drop them into the Recycle Bin on your Desktop. Next, open the WINDOWS folder. Again, look for a folder called TEMP. Open it, and again, delete everything. Don’t worry if you get a message that says a file is in use. Just skip it. There are nearly always some temporary files being used by WINDOWS.

Whenever you delete a file or program, it most generally ends up in the Recycle Bin. When was the last time you emptied that wastebasket? If you haven’t lately, then double click on the Desktop Icon and click on EMPTY RECYCLE BIN. Or right click on the Desktop icon and click on EMPTY RECYCLE BIN.

By deleting all of these files, you have left a lot of unused space scattered over your hard disk. Just the ordinary day-to-day activity on your PC results in what is known as fragmentation. That is, bits and pieces of files and programs become scattered randomly across your hard drive. This fragmentation causes your PC to waste a lot of time hunting for pieces of files that it needs. Windows contains some tools that help clean up your hard drive so that program and file retrieval is more efficient. Windows98 and later operating systems have a System Maintenance function. This function consists of ScanDisk, a disk checker that finds and marks errors on the disk surface and Disk Defragmenter, a tool that sorts out the empty spaces and combines pieces of files into contiguous space to make retrieval quicker. Newer versions of Windows have a utility that arranges your most used programs at the beginning of the hard drive so they are quickly accessible. Windows95 contains only ScanDisk and Disk Defragmenter.

The following operations may take considerable time, even hours, so do it when you know you won’t need to use your PC. Go to START*PROGRAMS*ACCESSORIES*SYSTEM TOOLS and click on Maintenance Wizard. These operations can be performed at a scheduled time, but for now, when the Maintenance Wizard dialog box opens up, click on PERFORM MAINTENANCE NOW* OK. On older versions of Windows, click on Disk Defragmenter.

When Defragmenter finally finishes, you will likely find that your PC works faster and you will have more available hard drive space. Keep your PC working smoothly by performing the above at least once a month.

Check out the club Website at WWW.TVCUC.ORG  and if you have any questions go to the Forum or send me an email at runcapher@chartertn.net.  Happy computing and Happy New Year.