General housekeeping tips for your computer

[prying eyes]

These tips are to help the novice /intermediate computer users keep their computer relatively clean and organized without too many technical terms or involved procedures.

As we all know, there are a myriad of files, cookies, temp files, spyware and just plain poor housekeeping that render your computer slow, prone to freezes, and hours and hours of trying to find the file you need.

The first thing I would recommend is to get rid of those temp files. In Windows XP go to the Start button/All Programs. Then to Accessories and across to System Tools and select "disk cleanup". The simplest method is to allow this program to analyze your computer and give you suggestions as to how to remove extraneous files. Click "ok" to free up the space.

The next thing is to open up IE. Go to Tools/Internet Options and the second box has "Delete Files". Click and delete all of the files your IE cache has collected.

To prevent this useless info from collecting once again travel to IE/Tools/Internet Options. The second box also has a button referred to as "settings". I have an 80GB Hard Drive. I set the slider in settings to 25 mb. This way not a lot of junk gets left in the Temporary internet files and speeds up my browsing also.

Go through your computer and find any programs that you have not used more than once. Obviously they are not of vital importance to you. Maneuver to Control Panel/Add/Remove Programs and delete those programs you no longer need. While you are there click on the left hand side on Add/Remove Windows Components. If you are not sure which components you need, leave them alone.

Now that you have removed a small, infinitesimal amount of useless junk, we can now double click on "My Computer" icon on the desktop. Right click on the C: drive, select "properties" and then the "Tools" tab. The first button is to error check. Click on that. A box will appear and put a check mark in both questions. When you go to close a message will pop up that it will clean the HDD at the next boot up. Do this step for D, E, ... if u have more than one partition. Exit all programs and reboot. A blue screen will appear and will begin to check your hard drive.

When this is complete and you are back in Windows, return to My Computer, C drive, right click, select properties, goto the tools tab and click on the second box which has a button called "defragment." Click on this button and the computer will return fragmented files to their mother files. Repeat procedure for other partitions too.

Ok, that's enough stress for now.

MORE TIPS:

INTERNET EXPLORER HOME PAGE CHANGED??? DON'T WORRY

To bring back your home page back, goto your required website, ie, open it in INTERNET EXPLORER, now click on "TOOLS--> INTERNET OPTIONS" from IE menu (or "control panel--> internet options")and under the "GENERAL" tab, u'll see a section named "Homepage" and click on the option named "Use current".
Close and reopen IE again. Now your home page will be automatically opened by IE.

HOW TO PREVENT ANY SPYWARE FROM CHANGING YOUR IE HOMEPAGE IN FUTURE:

Install spybot (anti-spyware program), if not done already. Here's DOWNLOAD link.
NOW, we can configure spybot such that IE homepage will not be changed by any spywares in future.

Procedure:
1. Open spybot. Select "advanced mode" from "mode" menu on top.
Now click on "tools" menu on left bottom.
3. Click "IE Tweaks"
4. Select (enable) all the three options given. This will prevent any spyware from changing your HOSTS file, IE start (HOME) page and internet options settings in future. Pls note, enabling 'lock control panel" option will also prevent you from accessing the "internet options" from within IE menu. You'll have to open it from "control panel" in future to change any settings. So don't be alarmed.