Marg Whitaker - As presented at the May 8th, 2007 meeting.

Between Charlie Le Ber and myself, we found quite a lot of things on Google. Here are some of the most important things I thought might help:

1. Make sure your Anti-virus program is always up to date! Run it as many times as you feel its needed, if you have been on a lot of sites when your finished - run it. You never know.

2. Run, Scandisk and Defrag as often as you need to, if you use the computer a lot, you will need to defrag more often, I use it once every 2 weeks.
   To find "Defrag"
   • Click "Start"
   • Click "Programs"
   • Click "Accessories"
   • Choose "Disk Defragmenter"
   NOTE: If the computer says you don’t need it, do it anyway, keep it tidy!

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3. Use CCleaner often to keep things tidy, Clean out your temporary files as often as you can, it’s amazing how much you can accumulate in just one day!

4. Don’t have too many things on your start up; you don’t need them all there. To take some off go to start, run and type in msconfig, go to start up tab, take off anything you don’t need there to run the computer.

5. Run your spyware programs, and keep them up to date, again the more you use the computer the more you should run them.

6. Use a registry cleaner if you download programs and try them and delete them. Reg Cleaner is one you can download, look at a free software site, it’s suggested you do this every 6 months, but make sure you are familiar with the program before using it.

7. Delete unnecessary icons from your desk top as needed, you don’t need them there all the time, and this takes time up as well

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8. Delete large sound files you may have added, to increase speed, this helps if you have limited RAM.

9. Move some of the unneeded fonts from C/windows/fonts, you don’t need or use them all.

10. Empty the Recycle bin often, daily if you need to.

11. Delete some of those emails, you don’t need them all! Jokes are great but they sure slow things down. You can make an appt for yourself and do it once a week or more, especially, Powerpoint and movie emails, they can be huge, and if you don’t have high speed, it will take a lot longer to download them, tell your friends if you are on dial up not to send big files like that.. Once you have answered it and/or dealt with it, delete it or put it in a special folder.

12. Close programs you aren’t using when you are finished with them.

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13. Shut down your computer if it’s sluggish, sometimes a program is closed but its memory stays in your system. Removing power from your system clears out things.

14. Don’t open and never reply to spam or phishing emails, once you do that, they have your email address, if you don’t know the person or company delete it right away.

15. Most sites you can disable pop ups, they take a while sometimes too.

16. Always keep Windows and your software up to date.

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17. When you have a lot of documents on the same subject keep them in their own folders Do the same with your emails, if you need to keep things on the computer make file folders for those too, and keep the file folder names short and to the point. I have, Savers, Computer club, Genealogy, Women’s Institute, Pictures (but don’t save too many, put them on a disk.) On Word and Excel I have folders as well for recipes, letters etc.

18. DON’T FORGET TO BACK UP YOUR IMPORTANT THINGS!

19. Have a look at our hints and information on our website there is so much information there, AND DON’T FORGET TO USE THE FORUM, LOTS OF QUICK SERVICE THERE! Use Google to find out something you need to know, just keep what you want to know short and to the point and you will come up with all kinds of things you can use. That’s what I did!