As we have said before, cleaning can take some time to accomplish, but you don’t need to do the cleaning all at once. You can break up the big job of cleaning into smaller, more manageable tasks. Do a little here and a little there until you’re done cleaning completely.
In reality, cleaning is never done completely — it
should be
done continuously. If you set up a schedule for your cleaning, your
system can remain clean and you lower the chance of having a messed-up
computer.
So what type of schedule should you set up for cleaning? In this
article we have told you about things you can do once a week and once a
month to keep your system clean.
Weekly Tasks!
Got some spare time on your hands today? The following list
explains
just five things that you can do in just 10 or 20 minutes to help make
your system cleaner. Try to do these at least once every week:
Clean the trash:
To empty your computer trash, right-click your Recycle Bin (on the
Desktop) and choose Empty.
Eliminate
unneeded e-mail messages:
Go to your e-mail program and empty the e-mails from three areas: Sent
Items, Deleted Items, and Junk E-mail. (These names are typical in
Outlook; the folder names may be different in your e-mail program.)
Note: In some cases you may want to keep some of your e-mails in your
“Sent Items” folder for example. Please do so. Do
not
delete things just because we tell you to do so!
Delete
unused programs:
Choose “Start >Control Panel > Add/Remove
Programs”
to open the Add/Remove Programs window. Examine the programs listed
there and see if you can delete any. If you don’t use it any
more, you should delete it.
It is important to be brave here. You might not want to delete any
programs even if you have not used them for the last 3-4 months. But
you must delete them. Many times you will find programs that you used
many months ago for some particular task and do not use any more.
Delete these programs. You can always re-install them. We know that
takes time to re-install, but think of the time these installed
programs take by slowing down your computer each day. So delete them.
Be brave.
Clean
out the Web cache:
The Web cache is your system’s storage of files downloaded
from
the Internet. Why are they downloaded? So that next time you visit the
site, the site is completely stored on your system and everything goes
faster! However, you must delete these files from time to time because
if you don't the build up and eat a large part of your systems space.
Exactly how to remove your web cache depends on the type of browser you
have. In Internet Explorer you choose “Tools>Internet
Options” to display the Internet Options dialog box. Select
the
General tab and click Delete Files.
Clean
out the root directory:
Every drive has a root directory, the place at the top of the
drive’s file hierarchy. For instance, the root directory for
the
C: drive is C:\. All paths for other files and folders start with the
root directory.
You can clutter up your root directory, putting lots of files and
folders there, but doing so can really slow down your system and make
it much less organized. Periodically clearing out your root directory
helps prevent this slowdown and disorganization.
Take a look at the files and folders stored there. If possible, move
the files elsewhere or delete them. The only folders that should be in
the root directory are those that represent major data divisions. Move
folders of lesser importance further down in the hierarchy.
These are just some small tasks that you must do weekly to keep your systems performance up. However, there are some more important tasks that you must do at least once a month to keep your system from breaking down. They are explained in the next section.
Next - Monthly cleaning tasks.. >>
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