Lean and Clean makes for a Mean Machine….Part
One
When
was the last time you deleted your temporary files?
Do you run Scandisk or
another disk checking utility on a regular basis?
Have you emptied your
Recycle Bin, your email client's trash folder, and your old sent and received
fax documents lately?
Do you keep your hard drive optimized (defragmented)?
There are a number of tasks and procedures you should do on a regular
basis that will keep your computer running at optimal efficiency. Beginning
with this issue of Everything Office and continuing into the next issue or two,
I will describe many of them, along with step-by-step procedures about how to
perform each. In this issue, our focus will be temporary files and folders.
Temporary Files and Folders in General
There are all
kinds of temporary files and file folders. These include setup files and
folders which programs you install on your computer create during the setup
process. They also include temporary files or "working files" created by the
programs themselves. Other temporary files might include incoming, sent and
trashed emails, as well as old fax sent and received documents. Still others
are temporary Internet files.
The problem is that these temporary
files, if not deleted, will eat up storage space on your hard drive; space
which could be used for permanent files and folders. So, how do you know which
files and folders are temporary and, of those, which you can and should delete
on a regular basis.
If you upgraded to Windows 95 or 98 or even NT from
Windows 3.1 or 3.11, read the following. If not, skip down to "Windows
Temporary Files" now. The first versions of Windows were generally configured
to save temporary files (those files with a TMP extension) to your DOS folder
or to a TEMP folder on your hard drive. Unbeknownst to you, it still may be set
to do this, so let's find out.
First, click on START, and then RUN.
Type in the RUN box, "sysedit" (without the quotes, of course) and press ENTER
or click OK. The SYSEDIT window will open in which you will see a number of
other windows. Click on the one labeled AUTOEXEC.BAT. (If you do not see one
labeled AUTOEXEC.BAT, close the SYSEDIT window.) Check the contents of this
file to see if you find a line that reads: set temp=c:\dos, set tmp=c:\DOS, set
temp=c:\temp. In fact, look for any "set temp or tmp=" lines. If you find any,
delete these lines completely and close and save the file. When you exit the
SYSEDIT window, you will be prompted to save the changes you made to
AUTOEXEC.BAT. Answer yes to save the changes.
Windows Temporary
Files
Unless you choose to save a file to a temporary folder on
your hard drive (which you should not do unless you will be using it right away
and then discarding it), any file or folder stored in a "Temp" or the
"C:\Windows\Temp" folder is considered to be temporary, so get rid of them!
-
Start by closing any programs that you have open, i.e. Word, Excel, your
Internet browser, etc. Now, open Windows Explorer (right click on the START
button and choose EXPLORE). In the left window, navigate to the
"C:\Windows\Temp" folder. To do this, find the Windows folder by scrolling up
or down (as necessary). Once you find it, scroll down to the Temp folder.
Highlight that folder. In the right window, you will see a list of the files
and folders stored in this folder. Delete all of the folders and files stored
in that folder. Do NOT delete the Temp file itself, just everything in
it.
To delete a file or folder, highlight it and push the DELETE key on
your keyboard. Click OK when it prompts you to confirm your deletion. You may
receive a message that tells you that the file you are deleting is "an
application" or a "read only" file and are you sure you want to delete it. You
do!
- 2)
Now, let's search for all files that have a ".tmp" extension. Still in
Explorer, highlight the root folder of your "C-drive" (remember we discussed
this in our last issue of Everything Office) by clicking on it in the left
window of Explorer. From the menu bar at the top, choose TOOLS, then FIND, then
FILES OR FOLDERS. The find window will open. In the "Named" box, type in
"*.tmp" [that's an asterisk, a period and the letters "tmp" (no quotes!)].
Press ENTER or click on FIND NOW. If you find any (for example, bill.tmp),
delete them. If you get a message that tells you "access denied" chances are
you didn't close all of your open applications, i.e. Word, Excel, etc., and the
file you are trying to delete is in use. Close all of your running programs and
try again.
Internet Temporary Files
- Next, let's get rid of all of your temporary Internet cached files.
In Netscape (you don't have to be on line), from the top menu bar, click on
EDIT, then PREFERENCES, then the + sign next to ADVANCED and then CACHE. Look
to the right and click on the CLEAR MEMORY CACHE and then OK. Now, click on the
CLEAR DISK CACHE and then OK. At the bottom of the window, click on OK
again.
For Internet Explorer, click on START, SETTINGS, CONTROL PANEL.
Find the INTERNET OPTIONS icon and double-click on it. Under the GENERAL tab,
second section down, you'll see Temporary Internet Files. Click on DELETE
FILES, then OK. If you wish, you may also clear the HISTORY folder, by clicking
on CLEAR HISTORY and then OK. Now click on the OK button at the bottom of that
window to close it and then close the CONTROL PANEL window.
-
Other "temporary type" files you should dump periodically are your email files.
If you want to save particular emails which you have received, create folders
and move them to these folders (To find out how to do this, choose HELP from
your Internet Browser, i.e. Netscape, Outlook Express, Eudora, etc.) and then
dump the rest.
If you don't do this on a regular basis, you will end up
with a hard drive full of emails. In Netscape, for instance, from your email
client (Messenger), save the "In-box" emails you want and delete the rest. Then
go to your "Sent" folder (save any of those you want for later reference) and
delete the rest. Finally, empty your "Trash" folder by clicking on FILE from
the menu bar at the top (remember, you must have your email client open to do
this). Then choose EMPTY TRASH. That's it for Netscape. The other email clients
have similar procedures. Find out how by choosing HELP in the particular email
client you are using.
Fax Files
If you use your computer for faxing, you
should periodically delete both sent and received faxes as these will also
consume valuable hard drive space. Since there are so many types of faxing
programs, please consult your users manual or the HELP on-line which is built
into your specific faxing program.
Empty the Recycle
Bin
Finally, empty your RECYCLE BIN. To do this, right click on its
desktop icon and choose EMPTY RECYCLE BIN. When it prompts you, click on OK to
get rid of them forever (well almost forever you may be able to recover files
deleted from your RECYCLE BIN by using the old DOS command called UNDELETE, but
you must do it immediately and it may not work with all versions of Windows
despite what Microsoft tells you).
You're just cleaned up your hard
drive. Next you'll want to Optimize it, which we'll discuss in the next issue
of Everything Office, along with how to use Scandisk. Make sure you save this
edition for future reference (we will be putting an Everything Office Archive
page on our website soon, which you'll find handy in case you need to refer to
an article or tip in one of our previous issues.
One final note. I've
probably mentioned this before, but I strongly recommend that you consider
purchasing Norton Utilities 2000 which will make doing much of the above
easier, faster and safer. There are other disk utilities out there, but I can't
speak for their performance, as I don't use them. What I do suggest, though, is
that you use only one set of disk utilities, as I know of many instances where
they may conflict with one another.
Good luck and remember, if you have
any comments or suggestions or perhaps a question about any of the above,
please email me.
-
Rich Poremba
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