John Watkins has returned from
England and will be hosting the program this week. He said he is going
to start with"Christmas Fun on the Computer" or how to keep the Guests
amused when the going gets tough.
Windows 95 and 98 have retained
the Windows 3.1’s system resource structure -- two 64KB sections of memory
that are set aside for specific jobs. The GDI (Graphics Device Interface)
resources section stores fonts, bitmaps, and such for on-screen display.
When applications run, portions of the User resources section go to their
menu lists, window logistics, and other information. The more crowded either
section gets, the more unstable Windows becomes.
Every program you open grabs
some system resources, but some programs don't properly relinquish them
once they've been closed. As you repeatedly enter, use, exit, and reenter
these applications, the amount of available resources continuously decreases.
The only reliable way to free up resources is to restart Windows.
This information comes from
the PC World web page at this address ----
http://www.pcworld.com/heres_how/article/0,1400,11372,00.html To check your system resources,
right-click on MY COMPUTER and choose properties. Click on the PERFORMANCE
tab. Look at the percentage of System Resources that are free – you want
to keep them as high as possible.
Animated Icons and Mouse Cursors
Animated icons, mouse trails,
pointers and sound effects take a toll on your system resources and overall
performance. The slower your computer is, the more performance suffers
from using these frivolous animations. Animated cursors make your computer
work at animating the cursor while processing other requests in the background.
Naturally, this slows down your PC. If you don’t like the default Windows
cursor, try using a cursor with a different color or shape instead of animated
ones.
StartUp Folders
Running programs at startup
(those that are in your Start Up Folder) requires additional processing
time by your computer. It has to load all of the programs in the STARTUP
folder from the hard drive into RAM. This slows down the boot process.
To check what’s in your
STARTUP folder – right click on the START button and choose OPEN. Next,
double-click the PROGRAMS folder – then double-click the STARTUP folder.
Note that all of the icons listed here launch automatically every time
Windows restarts. Applications sometimes put themselves into this folder
without asking, so if you find any programs in the STARTUP window that
you seldom use or don’t want, simply right-click them and select DELETE.
Selecting DELETE does not delete the program from your computer, it only
removes the shortcut icon from the STARTUP folder, which prevents it from
being launched automatically. You can start any of these programs when
you are ready to use them.
Backup – What About the Files You Have Downloaded??
We have often talked about backing
up your data files (the pictures you have scanned – your genealogy files
– the poems you have written, etc.) and organizing them in one central
place (like the MY DOCUMENTS folder or DATA folder) so that you can locate
them easily for the backup procedure.
But what about all of the
files that you have downloaded from the Internet? If you had to restore
your computer system because of a failed hard drive or a virus, would you
remember where you had obtained all of the updates, patches, ACDSee viewer,
IrfanView, the latest version of DirectX, your MP3 player, etc. Maybe you
should organize your downloads into one central folder (like DOWNLOAD)
and then create subfolders for all of the files that you have downloaded
and wish to keep. Then include the DOWNLOAD folder in your backup.
Making a Download Folder
To make this new folder from
My Computer – double click the My Computer icon from the desktop. This
will open My Computer. Now double-click on C: Drive (your hard drive) to
open it. Right-click on an empty part of the window and choose NEW from
the menu. On the next menu, choose FOLDER. You will see a folder appear
in your window and the name of the folder will be highlighted in blue –
this means that from the keyboard (without touching the mouse) you can
type a new name for the folder. Type in DOWNLOAD and then press the ENTER
key on the keyboard.
To make sub-folders (a folder
within a folder), double-click on the DOWNLOAD folder that you just created.
Now right-click on an empty part of the window and choose NEW from the
menu. You will see a folder appear in your window and the name of the folder
will be highlighted in blue – this means that from the keyboard (without
touching the mouse) you can type a new name for the folder (if you have
ever looked at the name of the file that you are downloading from the Internet,
you will find a very abbreviated name that I’m sure you will not recognize
next month when you see this file again – therefore, name the folder with
a clear definition of what is going to be in that folder – ex. the file
that is downloaded is WD97sp.exe – so we name the folder MS WORD SECURITY
PATCH). When you are finished typing the name, press the ENTER key on the
keyboard.