Feb 3

Taking Out The Trash
Sun Review February 3, 2001

Tuning up your car may be a costly endeavour, but you can optimize your own Windows PC with minimal effort and less money. If you keep your hard drive clean and tidy, your system's overall performance will significantly improve .

Let's start tuning up our system by emptying the Recycle Bin. Every time you delete a file or document, Windows sends it to your Recycle Bin, but it does not erase the file from your hard drive. This is done as a safeguard in case you accidentally delete an important file.

To clean your Recycle Bin, right-click on the Recycle Bin icon, then select "Empty Recycle Bin" from the pop-up menu.

If you want to circumvent the Recycle Bin altogether when deleting a file, you can press Shift+Delete to send a file directly to the Realm of Nonexistence.

Your Recycle Bin's maximum capacity is quite large, with a default size of one-tenth of your hard drive. If you have a 10GB hard drive, you could have a whopping 1000MB of unwanted stuff cluttering and slowing down your computer. Because it's easy to forget to empty the Recycle Bin, you can tell Windows to remind you to take out the trash more often by changing this default setting.

Right-click on the Recycle Bin, select "Properties", click on the "Global" tab and drag the meter to change to maximum size of your Recycle Bin to about five percent. Click "Apply" and you're ready to go.

Temporary files may also be clogging up your hard drive without your knowledge. Temporary files have the file extension .tmp and are usually deleted from your computer each time you shut it down, but if your computer crashes, they may not be removed. You can find your temp files in C:\Windows\Temp.

Before removing any of these files, make sure all applications are closed and ensure that nothing is running that might be using any of these Temp files.

Double-click on the Temp folder, choose "Edit" > "Select All" and press Delete to remove all these Temp files.

There are also Internet Temp files, which are webpages stored on your hard drive. To remove them, open Internet Explorer, choose "Tools" > "Internet Options", and in the Temporary Internet Files box, choose "Delete Files". While you're there, you can tell your computer how much hard drive space to reserve for these Temporary Internet Files. If you're using Netscape Navigator, choose "Preferences" > "Advanced" > "Cache" to clear the disk cache of all temporary files, and to designate the size of the cache.

Stay tuned for more computer tune-up tips!