Cleaning out your PC 2: Deep cleansing, clear up email, remove damaged program entries

Whenever a software application is installed onto your PC, along with the various files that are added to it, a number of entries are made to your registry too. This is one of the most important areas of Windows XP as all the vital data pertaining to every item of hardware and software that’s installed on your PC is held here. For example, configuration details, program preferences, colour settings, screen sizes and so on. In an ideal world there shouldn’t be any need to tamper with the registry but as we’ve already seen, the automatic removal processes of certain items of software don’t always work as well as you might have hoped. One such instance is the Add/Remove Programs entry that remains in the list even though you have removed the application itself. On this occasion you’ll need to go into your registry and remove the item manually. In order to access your registry click on Start > Run, type regedit and click on OK to launch the registry editor. As you can see, your registry is littered with hundreds if not thousands of different entries. Some of these have been left behind after applications have been removed from your system. However, the way the registry is laid out makes it difficult to identify what is needed and what isn’t. It would be sheer folly just to dive in there and start deleting entries without any forethought. To help you in this task you’ll find a copy of Registry Healer on the cover disc which you can use to identify and safely remove any redundant entries.

When you first bought your PC, that lovely hard drive of yours was most likely free from the many shareware and freeware software programs that abound on the internet. However, over time you’ve probably installed your fair share of these applications onto your PC. Nothing wrong with that of course, unless some of those programs are ‘spyware’ or ‘adware’. When you install such an item of software (usually unwittingly) a tiny ‘spying’ program is sometimes installed as well. This is used by advertising and marketing companies as a method of tracking and monitoring your online activity in order to build up a profile. It uses your internet link to send its info back and forth. If you’ve ever wondered why the speed of your connection isn’t as quick as it used to be this could be one of the reasons. Using a program such as Ad Aware, which is on the disc, you’ll be able to identify and safely remove these intrusive items.

Now that we’ve reached the deep cleansing stage you need to turn your attentions to all the files and information that’s stored within Internet Explorer. Your browser contains its own selection of files, information and settings all of which can be purged as you attempt to get your PC back to its former glory. To do this, open your browser, click on Tools > Internet Options. Your first task is to sort out how the temporary internet files on your PC are handled. Click on Settings and check the amount of disk space that’s being used. This ‘cache’ can help to speed up browsing but if hard drive space is at a premium then reduce the figure to something like 50MB. Click on OK, then click on Delete Files to clear out your current store of temporary files. You’re bound to have some useless cookies in the folder too but clicking on Delete Cookies will get rid of the whole lot, including those that are necessary. Your cookies folder is located at C:\Documents and Settings\USER\Cookies. You can browse the contents of this directory and delete any cookies files you don’t need but the consequences could result in a web page becoming inaccessible, so be careful. The other temporary storage area is your History which contains links to all the pages you have visited over a certain period. If this kind of tracking isn’t useful to you then drop the ‘days to keep’ figure right down and avoid clutter on your hard drive. Click on Clear History to remove all this information from the History folder along with all the URLs from the Address line drop-down box.

For the majority of people who use their PC at home, Outlook Express is the email client of choice. However, this is another area of Windows XP that receives little attention by way of maintenance. Continuously storing old and useless email just serves to bloat directories on your hard drive and cause Outlook Express to take longer to launch and display an email message when you click on New. The simplest way to clean up your mail folders is to go into each one and sort by date. The oldest items are the easiest to get rid of as they have usually passed the point of being useful. When you’ve done this click on Tools > Options and select the Maintenance tab. Click on Clean Up Now and choose the Compact option to free up any wasted space. Once Compact has been completed you will find that your mail folders open much more quickly in future.

1 FIND THE PROGRAMS LIST
Locate the Add/Remove Programs list in the registry by navigating to HKEY_LOCAL_ MACHINE/Software/Microsoft/Windows/C urrentVersion/Uninstall. The address displayed at the bottom of the registry editor will indicate when you are there.

2 FIND YOUR PROGRAM
When you have located this registry key you’ll see that there is a separate sub key for each of the applications that appears on the Add/Remove Programs list in Control Panel. Scroll down and find the key that corresponds to the program you want to remove.

3 TOOLS INSTALLED
When you have located your application name, right-click on it in the left pane and choose Delete. Close the registry editor and then go into Control Panel and open Add/ Remove Programs. You’ll see from the list of applications that the item has been removed.