Follow
these tips and you will definitely have a much faster and more reliable PC!
20.
Partitioning: A
very nice little thing you can do to boost system performance. By
partitioning your hard drive, splitting one physical drive into several logical
ones, you can gain several advantages. 1. If you get a virus or you
accidentally format a drive, not all will be lost. 2. By placing the swap
file (Win386.swp) on a separate drive, The swap file will be less fragmented
and thus, faster. 3. Place Windows on a separate drive and whenever you need to
reinstall it, you rest assured that your data is safe on a separate
drive. Partitioning can be done using a few programs such as FDisk which
comes with DOS. However, FDisk formats everything on the hard disk before
partitioning. Alternatively, you can use Partition Magic from Power Quest to
partition your hard disk without losing your data.
11. Take your PC to Bed: Using the Advanced
Power Management feature under Windows 98 gives you the option to use the
sleep command. That way, you can send your PC to sleep instead of
shutting it down and then restarting it. It's as simple as pressing a
button and then pressing the same button to wake it up. You can tell
Windows after how many minutes/hours of inactivity to automatically sleep the
machine in the Advanced Power Management section of the Control Panel.
12. Faster Internet Access: If you use the internet for
reference and the sites you visit are rarely updated then try the
following. In IE (the same can be done in Netscape) go to Tools, Internet
Options. Next, click on Settings... in the Temporary
Internet Files section. Finally, select Never for the
first option and double the amount of storage space to use, click OK!
13. Benchmarking: Benchmarking can be very useful when run
frequently. It can tell you how your PC's components are performing and
then compare them to other machines like yours. For example, when you
overclock your PC, you want to know how much more speed you have and whether it
is stable. All this and more can be discovered using benchmarking.
An excellent piece of software for doing this job is SiSoft Sandra which
can be found in the Downloads File Archive!
14. Refresh the Taskbar without restarting: If you in some way change the
taskbar, either in Regedit or elsewhere, you can refresh the task bar without
restarting. Hold down Ctrl Alt Del, and double click
on Explorer. Say Yes to close Explorer, but no to closing
Windows. This will refresh the Taskbar and system tray.
15. Quick CD Eject: Instead of pushing the button on
your drive, right-click your CD drive letter in My Computer and click on Eject.
This will also remove any icons that have become associated with the CD drive.
16. Start Up Programs: Windows can be slowed
down when programs run on start up. To eliminate this, check your Start
up folder. You can access it from the start menu: Start, Programs,
Start Up. Another way to eliminate programs from loading even
before Windows actually starts is by doing the following: Click on Start,
then Run. Type msconfig. It will take quite a long
time for this program to load, but when you finally see it on your screen,
explore the different tabs. They all have to do with how quickly your PC
boots, so select what you want, and uncheck what you don't want!
17. Fonts:
When Windows starts, it loads every single font in the Fonts
folder. Therefore, the more fonts you have, the slower the booting
process. To get rid of unwanted fonts, simply go to the Fonts folder
under c:\windows and remove whatever you don't want. Fonts that have a
red letter 'A' as their icon are system fonts, so don't delete them.
18.
Stretching Wallpapers:
Don't "stretch" your wallpaper in Windows 98 since it
actually slows Windows down when you drag icons around on the desktop.
19. RAM Matters: If you have less than 32MB then you should seriously
think of upgrading it to at least 64MB. Windows runs much more smoothly
with 64MB or higher and tends to use less hard disk space for virtual memory.
