The Computer Club Newsletter

November 2003

By Howard Jones

The November 4th meeting at the Yacht Club featured a demonstration of “How to Tune Up Your Computer” by our Club President supported by Club Officers and members in the audience. A computer that needed “cleaning up” was used to show the basic steps to follow to enable your computer to run faster. Ways to improve performance and to help applications run faster without hardware changes were shown. The “handout” from the meeting is the basis for the presentation in this article.

The December 2nd meeting will be held at its usual location, the Yacht Club, with Computer Basics at 6:30 PM. Questions unanswered from the November meeting will be addressed first followed by new questions brought to the meeting and questions from the floor. We will continue the attention to Computer Basics until we run out of questions or 8 PM. At that time there will be a casual social period with refreshments and the opportunity for conversation between members and with Board members who will offer suggestions for the solution of computer problems not addressed in the earlier session.

Please visit our website at www.tvcuc.org  for last minute information about this meeting. Channel 3 will also broadcast meeting details. We hope to see you there.

“How to Tune Up Your Computer” - This information will enable you to restore your computer to the performance you experienced when it was new. Should there be any questions about the following information don’t hesitate to contact me at hwjaaj@charter.net  or bring them to the December meeting..

Basics of The Issues:

• What is a computer? It’s hardware, an operating system (software – MS 95, 98, 98SE, ME, 2000 or XP) and applications (software – MS Office, Corel Draw, Quicken, Family Tree Maker and software to control printers, scanners, etc.)
   
• How is the software installed in your computer organized? Right click on “Start”, click on “Explore”. On the left side of the screen you will see the organization of your entire computer. The file structure provided in all Windows operating systems includes “My Documents”, “Program Files”, the identification of your hard drive, floppy drive and CD drive(s), etc. There are as many ways to organize files, data you generate and want to save for future use, as there are computer users. What’s important is that you understand where what you save in your computer goes and to have a logic to retrieve that information. Consider “My Documents” as a “File Room” lined with 4 drawer file cabinets. In each drawer are accordion folder containing manila file folders.
   
• When you use your computer the bits of information that make up the data are somewhat randomly recorded onto the hard drive. Over the time a computer is used, your operating system and application software have a hard time finding the data specific to the tasks you are trying to perform. Also, every time you are searching the Internet, the places you go are depositing cookies and miscellaneous temporary files. Cookies identify you to the various sites you visit when you return and “temporary files” are records of data downloaded as you “surf the Net”.
   
• It’s cookies, temporary files and the way you organize your storage of information that make your computer slow down over time and in some cases – “crash”.
   
• In one way of thinking about a computer that hasn’t been routinely maintained – it’s as if someone went into the “File Room” described above, opened the drawers and dumped all of the folders and the papers in them randomly in a big pile in the middle of the room.

The Cleanup Process:

1. Left click on “Start”, move the curser to “Programs”, then to “Accessories”, to “System Tools”, to “Disk Cleanup”. Left click on “Disk Cleanup”. A dialog box will ask you to select the drive you want to cleanup. Select (C:) and click OK. By continuing this process you will remove files that are not essential and free up significant space on your hard drive. But, let’s take a closer look at where these files are and where they come from.
    
2. Right click on “Start”, left click on “Explore”. On the left side of the screen you will see the organization of your entire computer. In W2000 and XP you will see “Documents and Settings”. Under the name of each user you will see a file named “Cookies”. Delete all cookies. The file “index.dat” will remain. In W98 “Cookies” will be in a file under “Windows”. All cookies may be removed.
    
3. Under the file for your computer’s W2000 or XP operating system there will be a file named “Temp”. All files in this folder may be deleted. In XP there is also a “Temporary Internet Files” folder under “Local Settings”. Files in this folder can be deleted. In W98 there is also a file named “Temporary Internet Files” under the Windows file and these files may all be deleted.
    
4. After deleting all unnecessary files, go back to “System Tools” and run “ScanDisk” and then “Disk Defragmenter”. In W2000 and XP the disk scanning utility is accessible as follows: by opening “My Computer”, select the local disk you want to check. On the “File” menu, click “Properties”. Click the “Tools” tab. Under “Error-checking”, click “Check Now”. Under “Check disk options”, select the “Scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors” check box.
    
5. It is recommended that you reboot your computer after each step in the cleanup process, even if you are not prompted to do so.
    
6. It is important to regularly run “Windows Update”.
    
7. It is also important to regularly update your firewall and antivirus software and to update your antivirus .dat (virus definition) files.

As Ron Uncapher always reminds us, make sure you update your antivirus software at least weekly. There are settings that will enable this to be done automatically. If you should have questions about how to do this ask your neighborhood computer guru or bring your questions to the December 4th meeting of the Tellico Village Computer Users Club.