RIVER BENDER - AUGUST,  2003

Is your PC operating sluggish? Is it running a lot slower than it was when it was new? It's quite possible you need more memory or a bigger hard drive but the first thing I ask folks when they complain about a slow PC is how many little icons appear in the lower right corner of their desktop (called the systray). Some people count as many as ten or so. If I ask them what all the icons are for they usually have no idea.

Everybody adds software to their PC over the years and every company seems to want their icon to appear on the systray. Worse yet, programs gets listed in your PC's start menu and are loaded into RAM memory every time you start your PC. This makes a program start faster when you click on the icon but it bogs down overall performance. Let's see what we can do to improve your PC's performance. I'm using Windows 98 which is what most people still use so some of the tips may not be available in other versions of Windows. The Msconfig utility, mentioned below, does not come with Windows 95 and 2000 but is available from .http://www2.whidbey.com/djdenham/Msconfig.htm

First check your PC's existing performance. Do a fresh start of your PC and right-click on My Computer. Select Properties then Performance. If you don’t have 80-90% free resources read on because you've got work to do to clean out stuff. I've had folks starting off with 60% and lower.

MS CONFIGURATION UTILITY (msconfig)

Go to Start/Run and type msconfig and click OK. If you see Normal Startup check Selective Startup instead and click on the Startup tab. You will see a list of programs. The ones checked are loaded into memory at startup, which you can uncheck by clicking on the check. This doesn't mean the program will disappear but means that it will not be loaded into memory at startup and use up memory. Uncheck practically everything except Systray, Load Power Profile and anything that looks like your antivirus program, which will have NAV in the name if it's Norton Antivirus. Actually you can delete everything and your PC will work but if you're missing something you wanted previously you could always go back and check it again. Click OK after you've unchecked items and reboot. Now check your performance percentage and see the improvement. If you're scared at first just remove a few items that you recognize and check performance. Startup time will also be reduced. Some folks say their PC works like new after the msconfig cleanup.

It's really surprising how much junk accumulates in your PC, especially if you visit lots of web pages. A neat house-cleaning program can be run by going to Start/Run and typing cleanmgr . This program will ask which hard-drive you want to clean. After that it will take a few seconds and display a menu showing how much junk you have in (1)Temporary Internet files, (2)Downloaded Program files, (3)Recycle bin and (4)Temporary files. Be sure all four are checked and click OK. I've helped folks who never cleaned their hard drive and had 30-40MB of junk. If you're having problems shutting down your PC or getting strange error messages cleaning out junk often eliminates the problem.

System files at C:are the heart of your PC. You might have 1600 or more such files and if any one of them get corrupted your program(s) won't run properly. Viruses usually screw up system files. Check them with the System File Checker by going to Start/Run and typing sfc. This won't check for viruses but will find corrupted files. You can configure the checker to do different things but until you know what you're doing just let it run in the default mode. If it finds a corrupted file be sure to jot the name down and follow instructions for replacing it. You'll probably need your original Windows 98 CD to extract a replacement file. If you don't have it you might ask a friend to copy the file on a diskette for you so you can copy/paste and replace it into your System folder.

SCANDISK AND DEFRAG (scandisk, defrag)

Scandisk is one of the first tools to run when you're having hard drive problems. If it can't scan your hard drive completely and repair errors it's possible that your hard drive has finally failed. There are other software tools to confirm this but they’re beyond the scope of this article. Run Scandisk by going to Start/Run and typing scandisk. Defrag rearranges the data on your hard drive to make it accessible faster. Over time bytes of a program get scattered over the hard drive and defrag puts them back together. Run Defrag by going to Start/Run and typing defrag. The larger your hard drive the longer it will take but the more often you run defrag the less time it takes since there's less work to do.

All past River Bender articles are at http://www.always-online.com/nbcug/dwindex.htm