Software

During my regular computer maintenance I tend to delete unnecessary files to conserve and recover hard disk space. Files such as temporary Internet files, regular temporary files, and old shortcuts are usually files that I like to remove. There have been times in the past when I have removed the unnecessary files but still have little disk space. Unless you go through each directory, it could be difficult to find which files are hogging all the disk space.

A few months ago I stumbled on a small application (less than 2MB) that has helped find files and directories that use up the most disk space. I use this application on all computers that I have used since then and have been easily able to recover disk space by finding other unnecessary files that have been using up a lot of disk space.

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I recently received an e-mail form someone asking if it is possible to change the Task Manager in Windows. They had another application that they would like to use, instead of the built-in Task Manager. It is very possible to change the Task Manager, since I use Proces Explorer and have set it so I can use that application instead of Task Manager.

While Process Explorer provides this ability, many applications that provide the same functionality may not allow a user to replace the Task Manager. In this post I will not only show you how you can easily do this, but also how you can do this for almost any application within Windows.

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As you use your computer it can become slower as time goes on. As you create and delete files, your hard drive can become fragmented, and take up valuable space. Uninstalled applications may also leave behind shortcuts or files that are no longer needed which can also use up disk space. If you use the Internet a lot, you may have had the unpleasant experience of battling with viruses, trojans or spyware. These are several reasons why it is important to maintain your computer.

While it may sound complex, performing regular computer maintainence doesn’t have to be complicated. In fact, you can automate the whole process so your computer can sort of “self-clean”. All you need to do is install the right tools, and create a schedule that works for you. In this post I’ll explain what I have done to maintain my old Pentium IV 1.7GHz machine so it can run Windows XP without any issues.

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Some time ago I wrote a post title Automating Computer Maintenance where I talked about creating batch files to execute some anti-virus, anti-spyware and a defrag application on a computer. The batch files can then be scheduled to run on a computer at a specific time to ensure that regular maintenance is performed without having a user remembering to do it.

After the post, I received e-mails about having the batch files also shutdown the computer once the maintenance was completed. The good news is that getting a batch file to shutdown, or even just restart, a computer running Windows is very easy to do. Let’s look at how this is done.

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I recently had an issue with my laptop. For some reason when Vista loaded, I was able to log on, but then it would stay on the Welcome screen. While I couldn’t see anything on the screen, I did notice that there was a lot of hard drive activity, so I knew that something was executing on the system. A funny thing is that when I pressed CTRL+ALT+DEL to try and restart, Vista would instead continue to load and I was able to view my desktop.

After doing a quick search online, I couldn’t find a solution to my problem, so I began to try various things to try and find the problem. After some testing I did manage to correct the issue and Vista no longer hangs at the Welcome screen. I’ll explain the process I used to solve this problem.

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