Windows Tips

[Glen]

Anybody use any of these suggestions?

http://msn.zdnet.com/msn/zdnet/story/0%2C12461%2C2237540-hud00025mn2d%2C00.html

[hurrikane]

surprised I didn't see anything in there about defrag and disc scan. If you deal with a lot of deleting...as it maitenance of your race files..you need to defrag frequently. At least every week. It's a pain..you can set your taskmanager to do it at night if you want.

[Rick]

Yes, and if you use any of the export programs you need to defrag frequently.

Of course I usually run three weeks at a time but find ALL_MSAC.txt to be my most fragmented file.

When you run scandisk do not save any lost cluster found unless you have a reason to do so. They just end up taking up disk space. You should be able to run a search on *.chk to see if you have any of those taking up disk space.

If you defrag once a week run scandisk before you do.

The defrag that comes with Windows leaves a lot to be desired. I found the defrag in Norton Utilities much better for Win95 and Win98. It is probably good for Win ME also; I just have not tried it.

For Win2000 I have found PerfectDisk to be better than Norton, which probably means it will do a better job in all windows versions.

The problem with the defrag that comes with Windows is that it just tries to defrag taking the largest file that will fit the space. With Norton and PerfectDisk they break the files down into categories, for PerfectDisk something like files accessed in the last 30 days, 60 days, and over 60 days and then splits it working in from outside and inside. Norton has more categories.

Of course the version that comes with Windows is enough for most people, just use it.

[Glen]

Just downloaded the following:

http://download.cnet.com/downloads/0-10106-100-6562118.html?tag=st.dl.10001-103-1.lst-7-9.6562118


Supposed to help WIndows from crashing...So far so good on Windows ME. In the past I usually get a handful of blue screens...