Number 248 - January 2004

Fixing Windows
by Lee Reynolds, From Boca Bits, Apr 2003, Boca Raton Computer Society
Windows is broken, and cannot get up! What do you do about it? Perhaps this column will be of some help to you in that regard. It will furnish you with tips, techniques, and general advice on fixing the most common problems with Windows 9x and ME. Incorrect Sort Order in Dialog Boxes    You're looking at files and folders in a Windows dialog box after doing an Open or a Save (or Save As). The files and folders are all out of order! You may see files listed in front of folders, which is the reverse of what it should be. The folders and/or files may be sorted in descending alphabetic order rather than the usual ascending order. This can happen if you have changed the normal sort order of Windows Explorer from the default order you usually see. In order to bring back the normal sort order, here is what you have to do: right click the Start button. Click on Explore, and in the Windows Explorer window that comes up, click on drive C: On the View menu, click Details. Click the Name column in order to sort the items by name. Finally, hold down the Ctrl key as you quit Windows Explorer by clicking on the Close icon in the upper right-hand corner of the screen. Now release the Ctrl key and restart your computer. When you next boot up, the correct sort order should have been restored in the Windows file/folder dialog boxes. Slow Performance    Degraded performance of a formerly quick running computer can come about for a great many reasons. It's not always possible to tell what the reasons are, but there are a number of steps you can take to try and correct this problem.    1. Much of the slowdown of computers is having too many programs running at once and consuming resources. Take a look at your System Tray (the little indented area of your Taskbar on the right-hand side, near the system clock.) Are there a lot of little icons in that area? If so, then you should hold your mouse cursor over each one to discover what it is (usually, a little "tool tip" will appear after a second or two that will identify the application). Do you need all those things? In most cases, you can stop them from running at startup. Often, if you can run the application to get to a main program window, there will be a menu option for disabling the automatic run at boot time. Or you might be able to right-click the icon and find an item on the context menu for doing this. If neither of these solutions work, then if you have Windows 98 or ME, you can use the Microsoft Configuration Utility to disable any unneeded startup programs. Click on the Start button, then choose Run, enter MSCONFIG and click OK, select the Startup tab, remove checkmarks from startup programs you wish to disable.	2. There are a number of ways in which you can clean up old data on your hard drive that will affect a speedup. Clean out your Temp folder, if you have one, and your Windows\Temp folder. Search the drive for files with a file extension of tmp, chk, and the like, then delete them. If you have Windows 98 or ME, you can easily do the cleanup as follows: click on Start, Programs, Accessories, System Tools, then Disk Cleanup.    3. Clear your browser's cache. If you are running Internet Explorer 5.0 or later, you can do this by clicking on the Tools menu, selecting Internet Options, and in the Temporary Internet Files section of the General tab, clicking the button for Delete Files. It might also help to limit the size of the browser cache after clicking on the Settings button in that area, for Internet Explorer has to search this cache when it's trying to bring up a page you've visited before.    4. Empty your Recycle Bin. (Right-click on the Recycle Bin icon on your Desktop and select Empty from the context menu.)    5. Compact your e-mail folders and empty your Deleted Items folder and your Sent Items folder.    6. Run Scandisk and Defrag. Both of these Windows utilities can usually be found on Start, Programs, Accessories, System Tools.    7. Do you have Microsoft Office, or some component thereof installed on your system? Then very likely you will find that there is a built-in part of that suite called FindFast running all the time in the background. You will see an icon in Control Panel for FindFast if your system is running it. This is a very resource-hungry and time-consuming accessory that should be disabled according to the instructions in this Microsoft Knowledge Base article 158705.    8. Change your File System Performance from Desktop Computer to Network Server (even if you're not on a network). This increases the size of the cache that the operating system uses. How you do it: right click on My Computer, select Properties. Click on the Performance tab. Click on the File System button. Change from Desktop Computer to Network Server and click OK enough times to exit the System Properties dialog box. In order to see the effects of this change immediately, you will have to reboot.
Number 248 - January 2004