How to: PC Housekeeping

Aged Cyber Aunt

You have your new PC, it's wonderful and magic, and all goes well, except for the odd glitch when it falls over, so you restart, and carry on until the next time. And sometimes it get worse!

There are a few things you should do from time to time to keep your PC in reasonably good order.

1. Empty the Recycle bin. This can be done either via the icon of the desktop, or through Windows Explorer. (Right Click Start Button, right click Recycle bin).

2. Check the C:/Windows/Temp directory is not filling up with .tmp files. If you have a number of forced restarts this can happen. Also some program installers are lazy about removing the temporary files they need to install their program. This may not matter on a large disk but can have unfortunate consequences on a small hard disk. Latter versions of Windows need a lot of empty hard disk space to work properly. If they do not get it they are inclined to 'hang', thus leaving more .tmp files!

3. Run Scandisk, which comes under Start - Programs - Accessories - System Tools in Windows 98 and something similar in Windows 95.

4. It's also a good idea to run the Disk Defragmenter from time to time; access via Start - Programs - Accessories - System Tools.
This tidies up the pieces of files so they are contiguous, not only the file parts but also it moves the files to one end of the disk. This allows your PC to run faster.

Aged Cyber Aunt Index Page

Updated 15 January 2004