During the past several years as a mentor ans system adminstrator for the Sun City Computer Club I have adopted a series of pr

Computer Clean Up Check List

Bruce Cottrill (bmcottrill@aol.com)

Mentor - Sun City Texas Computer Club

A common complaint of most computer club members is that my system is “taking to long to boot”, is very slow” or is ”locking up”. My theory on this is that PC manufacturers were telling us that we only needed 256 or 512 MB of RAM several years ago. As time progressed, the programs we used most, like AOL, MSN, AVG, Norton Anti Virus, McAfee Anti Virus and Zone Alarm have grown in size and capability and what was adequate memory-wise two years ago is no longer sufficient

The following is a checklist of the procedure to assist in cleaning-up a PC.

Phase I

1. System Configuration Utility - Run msconfig.

2. Remove Programs from the Startup folder.

Select Start>All Programs>Startup and ensure that the folder indicates Empty. Delete any shortcuts in the Startup folder.

3. Remove unwanted and/or unused programs.

Got to the Control Panel. Select or Add/Remove Programs.

Phase II Removing Extraneous Files

1. Delete all temporary (TEMP or TMP) files:

Empty the Recycle Bin

2. Delete all cookies:

Empty the Recycle Bin

3. Delete all Temporary Internet files. These are similar to cookies.

Empty the Recycle Bin

Phase III

1. Run Easy Cleaner created by Tony Arts

a. Registry: Cleans registry of extraneous entries that Easy Cleaner has deemed unnecessary

b. Clear Temporary Internet Files

c. Clear Cookies Files

d. Clear History

e. Clear MRU

f. Unnecessary Files - This is the biggest bang for your buck. There are a multitude of files created as back-up .bck,.old, tmp, etc. that get generated for whatever reason and are just taking up disk space.

2. Run CCLeaner (Select “Check for updates now” before running the application.

Phase IV*

1 Load, update and Run AVG Anti Virus (Free- latest version is 7.5)

2 Load, update and Run Spybot Search and Destroy

3 Load, update and Run AdAware SE Personal

4 Install Zone Alarm Firewall – Can also use the Windows Firewall. Do not use both!

Turn Off System Restore and reboot to remove old restore points. Upon rebbting, a new Restore Point should have been created.