Continual maintenance needs to be part of a weekly routine. In windows 95, 98, and ME, go to Start, Programs, accessories, system tools. Here you will find Scan disk, Disk clean-up, and Disk Defragmentor.

Scan Disk is important! When you open it check your standard tests and automatically fix errors options. Start it and let it run.

In Disk clean-up any boxes that show up, make sure you check mark all boxes, (the files that will be deleted are just junk or secondary files that you can safely delete)

The Disk Defragmentor answer yes to all boxes and if you want to watch the process, check mark show details, and you can watch it work. If you have never performed this process, it could take a couple of hours to complete. However, the more you run Disk Defragmentor the less time it will take.

NOTE: Before starting any of these system tools, turn off your screen saver and close all other programs. To easily turn off your screen saver, right click your desk top, go to properties, select screen saver tab then select none.

Remember, we are only a few clicks away for support through any of these processes.

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Windows 9x/ME

 Tec Tips 

The first place we’ll go is to msconfig. Click on Start, Run, and type msconfig in the window that pops up. Click OK and the windows configuration utility will open. First you select “Selective Startup” then open the startup folder. In there will be a list of programs that load and run in the background every time you start your machine. You can uncheck every box and your machine will still run but it will probably be pretty flakey. Ones you should leave checked are:

1: Scan Registry

 2: Task Monitor

3: System Tray

4: PC Health (WinME only)

5: Load Power Profile

6: Scheduling Agent

If there are doubles of any of these programs definitely uncheck the second one. (Keep track of what you uncheck so you can go back and recheck if one of your programs doesn’t run right.) Go to the bottom of the box and click on apply and your computer will ask to reboot. Answer yes.

Now lets go to Start, Programs, Accessories, System Tools. From the next menu go to Disk Cleanup. Click on it and it will open a new window. Check any box that is unchecked and hit apply. The computer will ask if you want to delete files, Say OK. Any files that you delete here are only clutter and this is a little task that you should do daily.

Now for the fun part: Click Start, Shut down, Check Restart and OK. Keep tapping the F5 key when the computer reboots(don’t hold it down). This will start the computer in Safe Mode(Yes, your desktop will look ugly). Work your way back to where you found Disk Cleanup and you’ll see Scandisk. Make sure Normal and Fix Errors are checked and run it. Here Windows will fix any errors it can and if it finds any bad sectors it will tag them and not write on them. Close this out and go back to the same menu and find Disk Defragmenter. Start this and let it run. If you click on Details you’ll get a full screen and a Pac-Man looking thing. This can take quite a while if you haven’t done it recently but the bright spot is it gets quicker every time you use it. When this is done restart your computer ( without F5) and it’ll boot normally and should run a good deal faster. 

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