Windows 9X Tips #9


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*1.   You can never be too rich, too thin or have too much
 available disk space. Over the next few days, we'll give you
 some great tips for quickly freeing up megabytes of hard disk
 space. To try today's tip, launch your browser and purge its
 browser cache. To do this in Navigator, choose Edit/Preferences;
 click on Advanced and then Cache. You'll find two buttons for
 clearing memory and disk cache. It's a bit more complicated in
 IE - the procedure varies for different versions. Find the
 Internet Options item on either your Tools or View menus. Click
 on the Delete Files button in the Temporary Internet Files area.


*2.   Bring up the Properties dialog fast by holding down the Alt
 key and double-clicking on the object of your choice.


*3.   Delete the animated Help files, which are the AVI files in
 the C:\WINDOWS\HELP folder.


*4.   For the smoothest installation of Windows 98 or Windows 95,
 we recommend copy the compressed setup files (the CABs for
 short) from your CD directly to your hard drive, and run setup
 from there. That is, if you have the hard drive space to spare
 (it's a little over 100 megabytes for just the CABS). Assuming
 your CD ROM is D:, here are the DOS commands to do that:

C: mkdir \win98 D: cd \win98 copy *.* C:\win98

Then install by typing:

C: cd \win98 setup

Having your CAB files on the hard drive comes in handy when
 programs require the Windows CD - just point the installation
 routine to c:\win98. It also speeds up installs.


*5.   Open Add/Remove Programs and uninstall any program you
 haven't used in six months.


*6.   Use the Find Files or Folders utility on the Start menu to
 search for the largest files on your PC. Click on the utility's
 Advanced tab, choose At Least beside the Size Is selector, and
 type 2000 in the KB field. You can make deletions right in the
 Find window. But be careful-don't delete anything if you don't
 know what it is. Be especially wary of files in the Windows
 folder and its sub-folders or your root directory.


*7.   Text File Trickery

Here's an easy way to always open TXT files in WordPad rather
than Notepad. Click once on any TXT file, then hold down the
Shift key and right-click on the file. Choose Open With from
the pop-up menu, scroll through the list of programs and choose
WordPad. Check the box labeled "Always use this program to open
this type of file" before you click on OK.


*8.   Good Things in Small Packages

Are those icons that are cluttering your desktop getting you
down? Bring them down to size and give yourself more room.
Right-click on the Desktop and select Properties. Click on
the Appearance tab, then the Item drop-down menu. Select Icon,
then pick a size of 16 (the default is 32). Click on OK.
(This works best if you make the words under the icons as
short as possible)


*9.   A Dialog for All Drives

Here's an easy way to view the properties for multiple 
hard drives all at once. Open My Computer and select all 
your hard drives by holding down the Ctrl key and clicking
on each drive. Next, right-click on any one of the drives 
and choose Properties from the Context menu that appears; 
Windows will create a single dialog with tabs for each 
drive. It also works for floppy, removable and mapped 
network drives.


*10.   The handy System Resource Meter resides on the taskbar and
tracks System, User and GDI resources. The more applications
you have open and running, the more system resources are
gobbled up. To install Resource Meter, go to the Control Panel
and choose Add/Remove Programs. Under the Windows Setup tab,
double-click on Accessories(System tools for Win98) you'll
find the System Resource Meter there.
