Windows 9X Tips #10


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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.   If Windows fails to boot properly, press F8 for the Windows
 StartUp menu, and pick the Logged (\BOOTLOG.TXT) option. It
 attempts a normal boot but records the status of every step
 Windows takes during the process. You can use this option to log
 a failed boot. Then, reboot to Safe mode if necessary and use a
 text editor to open BOOTLOG.TXT (in your root directory). Search
 for "fail" to find the boot steps Windows had trouble with.
 Failed steps are often excellent clues to the cause of
 the problem.


*8.   If you suddenly have a DOS line breaking into Windows 9x's
 blue sky logo screen, you might want to slow it down so you can
 read what it says. There are two ways to do this. First, you can
 watch for the lines to appear during boot-up and quickly press
 the Pause key (on some PCs you may have to press Shift+Pause) to
 freeze the boot in place. The boot process continues when you
 press any other key. Or you can restart your computer, and when
 you see the DOS line that reads "Starting Windows 95," press F8
 to summon the Windows StartUp menu. On Windows 98 machines, the
 surest thing to do is to press Ctrl when you see any DOS text on
 the screen, and hold it down until the Windows StartUp menu
 appears. Choose the "Step-by-step confirmation" option, which
 will pause after each command in CONFIG.SYS, AUTOEXEC.BAT and
 other internal boot steps, so you can verify that they're
 loading properly.


*9.   CORRECTION:

Our April 9 Tip of the Day included a bad URL to access the Print
 Folder 1.1 utility. The correct address is:

http://no-nonsense-software.com/freeware

When you drag and drop a file, it is either moved or copied,
 depending upon whether or not you're moving it from one drive to
 another. Unless, that is, the file is a program. Whenever you
 drag and drop a program file, Windows will create a shortcut in
 the new location by default.


*10.   Restarting Win9x  is normally a four-step process (click
 on the Start button, select Shut Down, click on the "Restart the
 computer?" button and then click on OK). You canm make it a
 one-step process by creating an icon on your desktop that
 restarts Win9x. Open Notepad and type @exit. Close the document
 and give it a name with a .BAT extension. Now stash the file
 somewhere on your hard disk. Create a shortcut to the file by
 using the right mouse button to drag it to the Desktop and then
 selecting Create Shortcut(s) Here. Right-click on the shortcut
 and select Properties. Click on the Program tab and select the
 Close on Exit box. Now click on the Advanced button and make
 sure "MS-DOS mode" is selected and "Warn before entering MS-DOS
 mode" is not selected. Click on the OK button twice. Give your
 new shortcut a unique icon and name. From now on, whenever you
 double-click on the icon, Win9x will restart, no questions asked.
