STOCK QUOTES     More market data...

Getting Started / Linda Knapp
Cleaning out the gunk in your computer

E-mail this article Print this article Search archive Most read articles Most e-mailed articles

Gunk is all the unnecessary junk on your computer that can slow down performance and ultimately cause system malfunction. It's those fuzzy photos that never got tossed, e-mail you've filed and forgotten, old programs you never use, hidden programs you don't want and too many programs that launch at startup.

How can you get rid of gunk and get your Mac or PC running faster and smoother?

First, schedule yourself an hour or two for computer housecleaning.

Start with document files and folders. Clean out photos you don't love, music you never listen to and video footage no longer needed. Don't forget the text files, too. There are probably lots you can throw away.

How to degunk your computer 1. Delete unwanted document files and folders, including photos, music, video clips and text files. 2. Delete old shortcuts (aliases on a Mac), installer programs and other junk. 3. Empty the trash bin on the desktop and other places that have them. 4. Uninstall the software you don't use. 5. Clean out old e-mail in the inbox and in the Sent mail folder. If you've created subfolders for organizing mail, clean those out too. 6. Get rid of spyware. 7. Defragment your hard drive. 8. Optimize the defragments.

Next, delete all the old shortcuts (aliases on a Mac), installer programs and other junk you can find. Empty the trash bin on the desktop and other places that have them (such as iPhoto and iMovie on a Mac).

Then, uninstall the software you don't use. On a Mac, go to the Finder/Applications and look for programs you installed that you don't need. If there's an uninstall file, use that; if not, delete the software folder. On a PC, go to Start/All Programs and check for uninstall options there. For the rest, go to Start/Control Panel/Add/Remove and uninstall what you don't need. On both computers, be sure you recognize what you're removing so you don't accidentally delete important software.

A general cleanup of e-mail clutter includes reviewing and deleting old e-mail in the inbox and in the Sent mail folder. If you've created subfolders for organizing mail, clean those out too. Above all, use a spam-fighting program such as Cloudmark SpamNet, Norton AntiSpam, McAfee SpamKiller or the spam filter that's built into Apple's Mail program.

Get rid of spyware, the secretly installed programs on your system that can track and send information about your online activities. The most malicious can steal passwords and credit-card numbers or enable an outsider to take control of your system.

Generally, PCs are more vulnerable to spyware than Macs (which require permission to download any program), but there are things all users can do to protect themselves, such as avoiding file-sharing programs and never responding to spam.

To be safely rid of spyware, PC owners should use third-party software, such as Webroot SpySweeper, or download the free X-cleaner from www.spychecker.com. X-cleaner scrubbed my kids' PC, but SpySweeper found 34 more offenders not long afterward.

When you're done cleaning, it's time to defragment the hard drive, which sorts scattered data into related blocks so it's easier to find. Windows has a defragmenter (under the Start menu, choose All Programs/Accessories/System Tools/Disk Defragmenter, and run the utility), but a better solution for PC and Mac is to optimize the hard drive.

Optimizing defragments also leaves room to add more data related to the applications you use most. If you defrag without optimizing, the hard drive will start to fragment as soon as you add new data. You'll need a third-party application to optimize, such as the ones in Norton Utilities or Alsoft Disk Warrior.

If you've done this much, you've done a lot. But, there's more. ...

I found very useful advice from two books: "Degunking Windows" by Joli Ballew and Jeff Duntemann, and "Degunking Your Mac" by Joli Ballew. With advice from these resources in hand, let's get more platform specific.

On a Windows PC

We'll start by using the Windows Disk Cleanup utility to delete temporary files. Go to Start/All Programs/Accessories/System Tools/Disk Cleanup and run it. To purge additional temp files, go to Start/Search, and type in *.tmp. Click Date Modified in the Search window to sort the files by date. Select the files more than a week old and delete. There were lots of these on my system.

Now let's tidy up the System Tray, which is usually in the lower right corner of the Windows screen and displays icons for programs that launch at startup. All too often, newly installed software adds itself to the startup list and each consumes memory and slows the boot process. Let's get what you don't need off the list and out of the Tray.

From the Start menu, click Run, type in msconfig.exe and click OK. Click on the Startup tab and uncheck items you recognize and don't want to open at startup. Click Apply, OK and restart. When Windows restarts, it notifies that you've made changes to the startup process. Check the "Don't show this message " box, and click OK.

Next, we'll run Windows Update. Go to Start/Control Panel and click Windows Update on the left. Let the utility scan your PC for available updates and install what you want/need. It includes Windows updates and driver updates for other installed hardware.

Now that Windows Service Pack 2 is available, download and install that for better general security.

Another cleanup task is to have Windows scan the hard drive for bad sectors and fix them. From the Start menu, open My Computer, right-click on the hard drive, click Properties/Tools and click to check the hard drive for errors.

Cleaning the Windows Registry is probably the scariest task PC users can imagine and probably one of the most important. The Registry is where Windows keeps track of how everything on the system is configured and works together. I've fiddled with the Registry before and afterward vowed never to go there again.

Luckily, there are third-party cleaning tools to help with this chore, such as V Communications RegistryFixer, which is a component of Fix-It Utilities, and Rose City Software Registry First Aid.

I used Fix-It Utilities and was very impressed. RegistryCleaner cleaned out more than 1,000 Registry items no longer needed, RegistryDefragmenter reorganized the Registry and additional system diagnostic and repair tools were also very effective.

Because I have Norton AntiVirus installed, I used Fix-It's Custom Install option and left out the anti-virus component. I've experienced huge problems with two installed virus programs before, and never want to make that mistake again.

On a Macintosh

If you own a Mac with OSX, check the Font Book for duplicate fonts, which can cause an application to get confused or even crash. For example, new software you install may include fonts, and if you already have those fonts, now you have duplicates.

To get rid of them, go to the Finder and click on the hard drive/Applications/Font Book, and scroll the font list for dots on the right, which indicate duplicates. Click on those, and under the Edit menu select Resolve Duplicates.

If you'd like to reduce the long list of fonts that appears under the font menu in an application, use the Font Book to disable the ones you don't use.

Another regular Mac cleaning job is to run the Disk Utility to verify and repair permissions. This ensures that your Mac remembers who has permission to open and write to what files and whether you have permission to modify your own files.

To use the utility, go to the Finder/Applications/Utilities/Disk Utility, select the hard disk, make sure the First Aid button is selected and click Repair Disk Permissions.

If you (as most users) have applications that automatically launch when the computer does, and you don't want them to because it slows down startup, it's time to fix that.

Go to System Preferences (under the Apple icon on the menu bar), open Accounts and click on yours. On the right, press Startup Items. If there are any you don't want to launch at startup, highlight them and press the minus sign below. To add startup applications, press the plus sign and select from the Applications folder displayed.

"Degunking Your Mac" advises us to toss out the library cache every few months. The cache stores data that make the system run smoother, but it can get clogged and corrupt, so it's best to clean it periodically. To do that, open the Finder, click on your user icon (the house)/Library/Caches. Select all the files there and drag them to the trash. Then go through the same steps in the Macintosh HD folder.

The book also suggests we get free software updates and purchase major updates because they generally help the system work more smoothly. To get free updates, open System Preferences, choose Software and press Check Now.

For further cleaning, some third-party utilities can help Mac users clean deeper and stay clean, such as Norton SystemWorks and Alsoft DiskWarrior.

Faster and smoother

OK, we're done ... at least with this level of cleansing. Hopefully, your system works faster and smoother than before.

If not, maybe it's time to reformat the hard drive and reinstall the system software. That is, if you have the original system discs that came with the computer and the installation discs for the hardware and software you've added.

Reformat/reinstall is a drastic step; everything on the computer is wiped off, and you start over with a system that looks like it did the day you took it out of the box. We'll go through the reformat/reinstall process next week.

Write Linda Knapp at lknapp@seattletimes.com; to read other Getting Started columns, go to: www.seattletimes.com/gettingstarted

Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company

E-mail this article

Print this article

Search archive

More business & technology headlines...