Vista System maintenance (was Upgrade computer Was (Re: "budget" laptop?)

["Kathleen MacDowell" <kathleen -at- writefortheuser -dot- com>]

You've all been a huge help with your suggestions, so if you have some
Vista experience, I'd appreciate any other comments re the following:

I'm in a recursive process right now, which started out as an attempt
to use a demo copy of Flare. Flare needed Flash, Flash needed Windows
.net (or something), .net wouldn't install till I installed XP service
pack 2 (which I cannot find at the download site) and on and on. In
the meantime, my system decided it needed to update too (twice), so I
haven't actually accomplished much in the last couple of days. But I
did disable Aero, and started looking into defragging, clearing out
temp files, and cleaning the registry.

 Here's where the questions come in:

Do I clear out the Temp folder at C//Windows/Temp or is there a
different folder?

Where is the registry I need to clean? Cannot find.

Can I clear the logs in the Computer Management directory at System
Tools/Event Viewer/Windows Logs? They are using up about 35 MB. I
suspect they might be part of the MS customer participation program (I
haven't signed up)

I did find the defragmenter, and it was already set up to do an
automatic defrag once a week.

I hope this doesn't sound silly to anyone, but I once ruined a
perfectly good OS by a panic delete one time, so I'm very cautious
about what I do about the system.

All suggestions highly appreciated. I hope your work is abundant and
your weekend is free!!!!!

Regards,

Kathleen


On Fri, Sep 19, 2008 at 3:33 AM, Edgar D' Souza
<edgar -dot- b -dot- dsouza -at- gmail -dot- com> wrote:
> On Fri, Sep 19, 2008 at 1:45 AM, Fred Ridder <docudoc -at- hotmail -dot- com> wrote:
>>
>> Respoding to Geoff's questions, Kathleen MacDowell wrote (in part):
>>> I am using Vista.
>>
>> That's your problem right there.
> [...]
>> 1GB is simply inadequate for Vista
>> itself, never mind any memory-hungry apps. If you're going to stick with
>> Vista, upgrading to at least 2GB should be considered mandatory. It will
>> yield a night-and-day difference.
>
> Or downgrade to XP... but whichever you do, let me second Henry's
> recommendation to defrag and clean out temp files often. My boss sees
> a huge pick-up in performance after defragging her WinXP (also Toshiba
> but I don't remember the model) laptop's hard drive. I tend to get
> antsy about too many temp files, so wind up cleaning those out quite
> often, but I too see large performance improvements when I defrag,
> which is infrequently.
>
> If you're staying with Vista, and if your laptop is running the full
> Aero interface, you might consider turning it off and going to the
> Basic UI... http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vista/disable-aero-on-windows-vista/
>
> HTH
> Ed.
>
>



-- 
Kathleen MacDowell
www.writefortheuser.com
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