Hard Drive Fitness Program
Here are five tips
for keeping your hard drive trim. Practice them often:
1. Delete any files that remain in the TEMP directory.
2. Delete any files that start with the characters ~WOA. These are application
swap files. Normally, Windows deletes these when you exit the apps, but
if Windows terminates unexpectedly, or crashes, these files may remain.
3. Likewise, delete any files that start with ~GRB. Windows creates these
to save screen information before you switch out of a DOS app.
4. Delete backup files you no longer need, especially if your applications
generate these files for you automatically.
5. Delete files you no longer use, such as accessories, help files, games
and wallpaper files.
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Unnecessary Font
cleaning
If you're
still hurting for disk space, get rid of fonts you don't use. Select Control
Panel/Fonts and select the names of the fonts you want to toss out. Make
sure the "Delete font file from disk" option is checked, choose Remove
and answer Yes when prompted
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Back Up for Peace
of Mind
When you purchase
software, back up all the installation disks. That's not piracy, it's
common sense and it's your right. Store the original disks safely, away
from magnets, static, excessive dust, or extreme heat or cold. Save the
box and documentation. If there's an installation key, tape it to the
box.
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Floppy to the Rescue
In case an
errant installation prevents you from booting from your hard disk, you can
use a bootable "rescue" disk. Take a blank floppy and run the DOS command
FORMAT A: /S. Copy your AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS (the system files) as
well as any files they call. Be sure to copy any files mentioned in DEVICE=
lines in CONFIG.SYS. These lines are required to run your hard disk, CD-ROM
and other storage devices. If in doubt, copy the file. Edit the copies of
CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT on the floppy, deleting the paths to the drivers
and leaving only the filename. This way, when the files are called, they'll
be located in the root directory of the floppy. Copy EDIT.COM and QBASIC.EXE
from your DOS directory onto this disk too, so you can edit files if you
need to. Write-protect the disk when you're done. |
Timely Notes
Use Notepad to help keep
track of your jottings. Type .LOG as the first line in a text file. Every
time you open that file, Notepad will put the time and date at the bottom
of the file (with the cursor right below it).
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Skipping Startup Folder
If you want to stop the programs in your startup menu
from automatically loading when Windows starts up, you can press [Ctrl]
+ [Escape] the moment the taskbar appears at the bottom of the screen.
Press the keys a couple of times until the start button picture is pushed
in. This can save a considerable amount of time when you have three or
four unwanted programs starting.
However, remember that some programs may require start-up components if
they are to function properly.
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Clean Registry
Windows 95 relies on the registry to function properly,
however it tends to get cluttered with unwanted entries. This happens
when you install and remove software. This can slow your machine and Windows
down, or even cause it to crash. To ensure a clean registry periodically
run Reg Clean 4.1, a cleaner that is available from the Microsoft web
site.
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Swap Files (Faster)
Windows 95 allocates its swap files on any drive you
specify, including compressed drives. The fastest possible disk swap file
is one on a separate disk of its own. Compressed drives can slow down swapping
because of the compression overheads involved. You can achieve good speeds
by partitioning off about 150Mb of your hard drive and telling windows 95
to use it for swap files. Do not use this drive for any of your work. Set
it from system/performance/Virtual memory. To improve the speed a bit further
you could set the minimum and maximum to the same size that you created
the disk. Moreover, this will create a permanent swapfile rather than a
temporary one, thus increasing the speed. |
Repair Desktop Icons
If your Start Menu is slow or your icons are black
for some reason, it means your Shelliconcache file is corrupt and should
be deleted. Delete the hidden file C:\WINDOWS\SHELLICONCACHE. It will
be recreated the next time you start Win95. The icons will now return
to their normal states.
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Size (Of The Scroll Bar) Does Matter
To change the size of the scroll bar, right-click on
the Desktop, select Properties, choose the Appearance tab, Go to the item
list and find scrollbar. Changing the value in the Size field will increase
the scrollbar width to the desired value.
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Changing 3-D Highlight And Shadow Effects
Shadowing and highlighting of 3-D objects (buttons,
etc.) is set by default, independently of the button face. You can change
them by running REGEDIT.exe and drilling down the following path: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control
Panel\Colors. Select one of the six button effects names and choose Edit|Modify,
then change the RGB data as desired. For example, you might want to swap
highlight and shadow for "negative" buttons. Just swap the ButtonHilight
Data values with the ButtonShadow values.
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OpenGL Screen Saver Easter Egg Win95 Or NT 4.0
Choose the 3D Text screen saver. In the Settings dialog
box enter the word volcano. The screen saver will show the volcanoes on
the West Coast of the U.S. |
Shortcut To A Specific Point In Any Document
You can drag a paragraph from a Word document or a single
cell from an Excel worksheet and drop it anywhere to create an instant shortcut
to that information just as you would for any object. Right-drag a selection
from any OLE document onto the Desktop or folder, then select the "Create
Document Shortcut Here" item, and a shortcut (bookmark) will be created.
Opening this document shortcut at a later time will open the original document
and return you to the place in the document that the shortcut originated.
You can also send e-mail with this shortcut. When the recipient double-clicks
on it, it will open the spreadsheet, scroll to that cell, and select it.
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Speed Up Boot-Up
Win95 pauses
for about two seconds during boot-up to give you the opportunity to press
a start-up key such as F8. You can remove the pause and make boot-up faster.
First, right-click on the MSDOS.SYS file and select Properties. Make sure
the read-only attribute is unchecked. Now, open MSDOS.SYS in Notepad and
add the entry BootDelay=0 to the [Options] section. When you're through,
re-check read-only, for safety's sake.
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New Look Startup And Shutdown
Create your own Windows 95 opening and closing screen
(if you have nothing better to do! Just kiddin!). These bitmap files are
present in the hard disk under Windows folder as LOGOS.SYS and LOGOW.SYS
(Check on show hidden files in view options in explorer - these files
are saved as RHS). You can make any bitmap file the opening or closing
changing its name to LOGOS.SYS or LOGOW.SYS too. For animated startup
screens (like the animated bar at the Windows 95 Start up screen bottom)
you could use the shareware program BMP Wizard.
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Don't Get Cloudy
Remove the Clouds of Windows 95 start up screen by
adding the line logo=0 to the [options] section of the file MSDOS.SYS
in your Boot drive's root directory. Remember, this is a RHS (read only,
hidden, system) file. This parameter stops display of the logo screen.
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New Names In Start Menu
If you right click on an item in the start menu/toolbar,
there is no 'rename' option. To rename an item:
1. Left-click drag the item in question to the desktop.
2. Rename the new item on the desktop whatever you want.
3. Right-click drag the newly-renamed item back to its previous location
and choose 'Move here'.
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Solving Floppy Drive Problems
In Win98
If you face floppy drive problems with Windows 98,
even when the floppy drives worked perfectly under Windows 95 or previous
versions of Windows and MS-DOS then right click on My Computer on the
desktop. Click on Properties, then Performance. Then click on File System.
Click on Floppy Disk; if there is a check in "Search for New Floppy Drives
Each Time Your Computer Starts" remove it. Then click on Removable Disk
and make sure write-back caching is not checked. This may also help with
Zip Drives and other removable media such as tape backup, Jazz, and other
non-hard drives and CD-ROM/DVD drives.
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To Change A Folder's Icon
To change the icon associated with a folder, open Notepad
and enter the two lines,
[.ShellClassInfo] IconFile=file name,
number (e.g. IconFile=C:\Icon\CustomFolder.ico,0)
Save the file as DESKTOP.INI in the folder you wish to change. Click Start
-> Run, type in the command line, ATTRIB +S "folder name" (e.g. ATTRIB +S
"C:\Custom Folder") Open Explorer or My Computer. Refresh (press F5 key)
the display to see the effect of your change |
Aligning Drop-Down Menus To The Right
All dropdown menus can be aligned to the right. This
feature becomes useful when trying to access menus with submenus that
appear directly to the right. Open the Registry editor (e.g. regedit.exe)
Goto \\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop Create a string entry called
"MenuDropAlignment" Set its value to 1 Reboot
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Background Bitmap Where You Want It
Normally, you only options for displaying a background
bitmap are tiled, centered, or stretch to fit (with the Plus Pack). You
can edit the registry and have a third option, which is to place the bitmap
anywhere on your screen by specifying the X and Y co-ordinates.
Start Regedit
Go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER / Control Panel / Desktop Create new Strings called
WallpaperOriginX and WallpaperOriginY
Give them values to position them around your desktop The bitmap must be
smaller than your desktop size. |