Tune up your computer...

Tune Up Your Computer
By: Scott Hendison � Published: February 1998

Computer problems have become a normal part of everyday life, like poor TV reception, or traffic on the freeway. Your computer will run better if you take advantage of a couple of the utilities that Windows 95 offers to its users. Two such utilities are called Scandisk, and Disk Defragmenter. Before that, however, you can clean up some of your unused filed that are just hanging around taking up space.

First, delete all of the temporary files that get created when installing various software programs. From the Start button click on Find then Files or Folders. Type in "*.tmp" in the Named box and select My Computer in the Look in box. This will find all the *.tmp files on your hard drive that are just wasting disk space.

When the search brings up the files, highlight the first one and while holding down the Shift key, click on the last file. This should highlight all the files. You can then press the Delete key to get rid of them all in one step.

Follow the same procedure to look for *.chk files that ScanDisk may have saved to your hard drive.

Another thing to look for if you are online a lot is your cache directory . Every time you go to a new web page, your browser saves a "picture" of that page to your hard drive so if, during that online session, you go back to that page it won't take so long to load. This can quickly fill up your hard drive. The easiest way to check is in Windows Explorer (not to be confused with Internet Explorer). Look for your browser (AOL, Netscape, or Internet Explorer) directory and then look for the cache subdirectory. Just delete all the files in the cache directory. This will free up a lot of hard drive space.

It's also a good idea to run Scandisk and Defrag at least once a month. Some experienced users run them both weekly, and some users and manufacturers recommend running them every time a new program is either installed or uninstalled.

To run Scandisk:
From the Start button click on Programs then Accessories then System Tools. Click on ScanDisk. Select the Drive that you want to scan, usually the C drive. There are different ways to scan your drives. You can do a Standard scan which just checks your files and folders. This is a good one to use once a week. If you choose the Thorough option, this checks the surface area of your hard drive. This takes much longer and only needs to be done every month or so.
To Run Defrag:

From the Start button click on Programs then Accessories then System Tools. Click on Disk Defragmenter. Choose the drive that you want to defrag or choose all drives then click on Start. You can then click on Show Details to see what defrag is actually doing to your machine.

Files become fragmented and are stored in different areas on your hard drive. When you run Defrag it puts the files back together and speeds up your hard drives access time opening and writing to those files.

Doing these things may not solve all of your computing problems, but they will get your computer running faster and more efficiently so that you can spend more time computing, and less time staring at the hourglass.

note 2007:

Scott Hendison is the CEO of Search Commander. He is a former Portland computer store retailer that built a local on-site service business through Pay Per click and organic search engine optimization. In 2003, he started focusing exclusively on search marketing.

Today he is a search engine marketing consultant that serves clients in 5 countries, who find him on the front page of most search engines for "internet consultant" and related phrases.