Sarasota PC Monitor
Tech Talk (04/01)
More Windows tools
by Brian K. Lewis, Ph.D.*
Member of the Sarasota Personal Computer Users Group, Inc.As I mentioned in Tech Talk a couple of months back, there are more tools in Windows 9X and ME that are useful in maintaining your computer. One of these is the Disk Cleanup tool. This utility removes temporary Internet files, empties the recycle bin and deletes unneeded files from your temporary folder. It also has options that will allow it to remove optional Windows components that you don't use. Further, you can use it to remove programs that you do not use. To run this program, double-click the "My Computer" icon on your desktop. Then right click the drive you want to clean. In the window with the "General" tab, there is a button in the lower right hand corner labeled "Disk Cleanup." Click this button to bring up the Cleanup window. If you selected your C drive, the list in this window will show Temporary Internet Files, Downloaded Program Files, Temporary Files and Recycle Bin. The amount of space that you will recover is shown by each entry. Ensure that there are checkmarks in the boxes by the items you want to remove and then click on the OK button.
If you want to see what else can be removed from your drive, click on the "More Options" tab. This brings up two more options, Remove Windows components and Remove programs. These windows are identical to the ones you get when you select Add/Remove Software in the Control Panel. (In Windows ME there is an additional option to change the amount of disk space used by System Restore.) If you click the Clean-up button for either of these options, you will be given a list of the programs on your drive. The Windows components will list the optional Windows components you can remove, such as screen savers, media files, communication files, desktop themes, etc. If you remove the check mark by a component, you will see a message telling you how much space will be recovered on your hard disk. Then when you click on the OK button, that component will be removed. For the program list, you can remove programs one at a time. However, always be cautious with removing Windows components and application programs. Be absolutely certain you know just what you are removing so you don't remove something that you have been using or really need.
Windows also contains a backup application that can copy your files to a tape drive or to removable media such as floppy disks or Iomega JAZ disks. This program does not work with the older QIC-40 tape format. It does restore backups made with either Windows 95 or 98. Note that Windows ME does not contain a backup application. However, the System Restore function in Windows ME does not serve as complete backup as I'll explain later.
Microsoft Backup is not automatically installed when Windows is installed on your computer. To install it, go to the Control Panel, Add/Remove Programs and then click the Windows Setup tab. Find System Tools in the list and click the Details button. Then click the box next to Backup to put a check mark in the box. Next, click the OK button, then the Apply button and finally the OK button. You will be asked to restart your computer to finish the installation. To run the program, go to Start, Programs, Accessories and then System Tools. Select Backup in the System Tools list. If you have a tape drive installed, the program should find it when it runs the first time. If you are using some form of removable media (JAZ, ZIP, etc.) then you will get a message that no backup device was found. This window also asks if you want to run the "Install Hardware Wizard." In this case click NO and the program will continue. When you are ready to select the destination for the backup, it will be to a File and you need to select the drive in the "Where to back up" box. Using this method, I was able to get the program to accept my ZIP drive as the destination for the backup file.
If you have made a full backup of your system with Microsoft Backup, then you can do a complete restore using the Windows 98 startup floppy, the Windows 98 CD-ROM and your backup. The first step is to boot the system with the floppy and select CD-ROM support. Then at the command prompt type the letter of your CD-ROM drive and press the Enter key. Then type: CD \TOOLS\SYSREC. This command will change you to the proper directory on the CD-ROM. Then type: PCRESTOR. (These commands should be typed without the period or other punctuation.) After the Windows setup is completed, the System Recovery Wizard will be started automatically.
Windows ME has a System Restore Utility that is automatically installed on your hard drive. This program is designed to restore your computer to a specific point in time where it was running correctly. It monitors and records changes to the core Windows system files and the registry. The utility restores files with EXE, VXD, DLL, COM and SYS extensions (suffixes). It does not restore any user created files such as documents, spreadsheets, accounting records, etc. It also does not restore the "My Documents" folder, Internet history files, cookies or favorites. Because of the limited nature of System Restore, I would recommend that you also install a third party backup system to protect your data.
So how do you use System Restore? If, after you install new software or drivers for a hardware device, your system does not work properly, Microsoft recommends removing the software before trying System Restore. If your computer still does not function properly, then you can run System Restore and "roll back" your system to a point where you know it was functioning correctly. These "Restore points" are created automatically every 10 hours of computer time, but only after the computer has been idle for 2 minutes. You can also create Restore Points manually. This should be done anytime you are planning to make a change to your system, such as installing new software. Although most software today, can be removed by its own uninstall program, having a Restore Point gives you another degree of safety.
System Restore uses a minimum of 200MB of hard disk space for the "Data Store." On drives larger than 4GB, the Data Store is 12% of the size of the drive. In other words, on your 20GB hard drive, 2.4GB are reserved for the Data Store. On drives smaller than 4GB, the Data Store is 400MB. If the actual amount of data reaches 90% of the Data Store capacity, the program will purge old Restore Points, until the size has been reduced to 50%. You can adjust the size of the Data Store manually or even disable it if you prefer. However, I would be very careful about making such a choice.
There is another tool in Windows 98/ME that can be very useful. That is "MSCONFIG.EXE." Running this program from the Start/Run menu gives you some boot-up options that can be used for problem diagnosis. One example is the need to re-start your system in Safe Mode. Instead of trying to catch the startup menu during boot-up by using the F8 or Ctrl keys, run MSCONFIG. On the first page, click on the Advanced button. On the page that comes up, click in the box by "Enable Startup Menu." Click on the OK buttons until the program is closed. Now when you restart your computer you will be given the choice of regular mode, safe mode, etc. Of course, this presumes that you can get into Windows to run MSCONFIG.
Check out the Window tools on your system so you can become familiar with them before you need them.
*Dr. Lewis, a former university & medical school professor, is a computer consultant doing instruction, hardware/software services and system upgrades.
He is available to help you with your home or business computer problems. He does make house calls and can be reached via e-mail at brian_klewis@hotmail.com or voice mail at (941) 925-3047. Note: there is an underline between the n and the k (n_k) in the email address. :
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