Tamie,
RegClean is fine to use.
Here's my typical list of speed-up and maintenenace tips:
Here are some steps to take (most are geared toward Win98)
Try hitting F2 or the Del key on startup to access the BIOS. You may see an entry for Fast Boot or similar wording. Enable it.
The first file we want to edit is MSDOS.SYS. This is a read only file, as well as a hidden file. So before you can edit it, you need to do 2 things to be able to do so.
First, open Windows Explorer, On the top toolbar, chose "Tools","folder options", then click on the View tab. Check "Show hidden files and folders", and uncheck "Hide protected operating system files", and click Apply, then Ok.
Next, do a file search for MSDOS.SYS. Right click on it, and select "properties". You need to uncheck "read only",Then click Apply and Ok. After changing the file attributes, double click on MSDOS.SYS, it should open in notepad. (If this doesn't work, hold the shift key down while right clicking on the file will give you an "open with"... option, select this and choose open with notepad). The changes that can be made are as follows.
Make these changes under [Options]:
Logo=0 (This disables the start-up logo, reducing load time. If you really like the Windows logo, don't use this setting)
BootMenuDelay=5
Default: 30
This setting is used to set the number of seconds your system will pause on the Startup menu. If the number of seconds counts down to 0 without intervention, the BootMenuDefault is activated.
NOTE: This option is not functional unless BootMenu=1 has been added to
the [Options] section of the Msdos.sys file.
If it's running that poorly, right-click on My Computer, click the Performance tab and verify the File System and Virtual Memory are 32-bit.
Click the Virtual Memory button and make sure that Windows is managing the virtual memory. Move your swapfile to a partition with more space, if possible.
If those are OK, try these steps to eliminate unecessary program running:
The things that make the computer slow are the many unecessary items that automatically startup when Windows starts.
Right-click on the icons in the tray area, open each, go through the options to turn off the "tray" or "run at startup" feature.
For the others, go to Start>Run, type msconfig. Leave systray, scan registry, Load Power Profile (both), your virus scanner and firewall if you have one.
Go to Start>Run, type sysedit. Look over the autoexec.bat for unneccessary lines, click the win.ini and check for programs loading here:
[windows]
load=
run=
Open Explorer and navigate to c:\windows\temp and delete all files and folders here. Empty the Recycle Bin.
Open Internet Explorer, go to Tools>InternetOptions, click the Delete Files and Clear History buttons. Click the Settings button, then set a reasoble size for the temporary internet files cache. I'd suggest 40MB for a 56K connection, as little as 10MB for a cable or DSL connection. If you have more than 4 folders under this key:
C:\WINDOWS\Temporary Internet Files\Content.IE5
If you're familiar with DOS, you can do this:
It will totally clean everything.
Click Start, click Shut Down, click Restart In MS-DOS Mode, and then click OK.
At the command prompt, type the following commands, pressing ENTER after each command, and pressing Y if you are prompted to confirm folder deletion:
cd\windows
smartdrv
deltree cookies
deltree history
deltree tempor~1
exit
The neccessary files and folders will be rebuilt at startup
Right-click on the desktop, make sure Active Desktop is turned off, then click properties and click the Effects tab. turn off Animate windows, menus, and lists.
Close all tray applications and hit Alt_Ctl_Del and end task on all items except for explorer and systray, disable your screensaver, then run scandisk, then defrag.
If you don't know what an entry is or what it does, post back.
If you're using Microsoft Office, look up this Knowledge Base article to kill the Find Fast Indexer
In Internet Explorer, go to Help>Online Support, choose the Microsoft Knowledge Base, then check the box that says specify an article ID number, then paste Q158705 into the search box. I'ts titled "How to Disable the Find Fast Indexer"
reghakr
