Windows XP Registry File

The windows xp registry file is a database file that is part of windows xp. It contains all the information and parameters pertaining to your windows xp installation. It holds information about the programs that you have installed as well as the entire configuration parameters for your system. The windows xp registry file also holds all the information on how the desktop looks to you.

Your computer runs fast when your computer is new and the windows xp registry file has not got much in it and is clean without leftover information. As your computer gets older and you install more programs as well as removing programs you no longer want, your computer starts to slow down. This is because the  windows xp registry file get larger and larger causing windows XP to take longer to find information. Your registry will also start to contain errors, which also has a slowing effect. By removing unnecessary files, your computer finds what it needs in the registry a lot faster. Despite this, the windows registry will still get filled up over time. Frivolous entries will clutter the windows xp registry file as it becomes fuller and fuller and more and more programs are installed or removed.

One way to reduce this is by using a Registry Cleaner. This works by removing and deleting unnecessary program information. It will also remove all those errors that have accumulated in the windows xp registry file. When you create or delete files or install or uninstall software, it adds to your registry. Unfortunately by removing programs fragments are frequently left behind. Bits of the software programs are often still on your computer. If you leave these remnants, problems can be caused, sometimes making your Windows XP unstable and slowing it down causing problems in the future. A registry cleaner is programed to clean up your registry file by removing anything that should not be there and compacting it.

Because of the need for Windows XP to use the registry, there is no way to avoid cluttering up your windows xp registry file. You can fix the Windows registry errors, but you should avoid trying to delete registry errors yourself. You would be much better off purchasing a low-cost Windows registry cleaner and periodically running it.

Most types of registry cleaner provide a backup feature, which should be used before using any  registry cleaner software. Using the backup feature allows you to restore your registry settings if there is a problem during the cleaner use. Registry cleaner software allows you to clean and repair windows XP registry file without risk.

You should also have your system checkpoint enabled so that you can use the windows system restore feature if anything gets out of hand.

The most thorough registry cleanup can be performed using registry scanners and cleaners. With minimal instruction, the windows registry will be repaired and cleaned by these tools. Don’t make a mistake, a windows registry clean is of utmost importance to extend your computer’s life. One reasonable priced cleaner I recommend is ErrorFix. ErrorFix gives you a free scan that will give you an indication on how good or how bad your registryfile is. Click on ErrorFix to get your free scan.

The commercial registry cleaner programs now sold are much more efficient and up-to-date than the windows free registry repair tools available. Just remember it is important that you periodically clean your windows XP registry file not only to speed up windows XP but to keep it stable.

Windows XP Services perform certain tasks on your computer on behalf of other programs. For example the fact that you are reading this article means that a number of Windows XP services were used that enabled your browser to go out on the internet to retrieve the article. If these were not running then your browser would come back with an error saying it could not connect or access the site with this article on it.

So why doesn’t a program like your browser have these sort of Windows XP Services built into them? There are a couple of reasons. One it would make the programs a lot bigger and more cumbersome. It would make updating them more difficult if there had been an update to Windows XP as every program on your computer would have to be updated so they would continue to run.

When one considers that a lot of programs use the same Windows XP services wouldn’t it be better to have one copy that is used by all of them? Of course it would.

There are two types of Windows XP Services, those that need to be running all the time and those that only need to run when they are used by a program. One big problem with windows XP is that a lot of Windows XP Services are running that do not really need be running. A lot of the time they may be there because a program you have subsequently removed needed a particular one running. It is not always removed when the program is removed. There are also Windows XP Services running that Windows XP installs and sets to run automatically as a default when Windows is installed. The consequence of this is that they stay in your PC’s memory taking up space.

How do you stop the Windows XP Services running that you don’t need thus saving valuable memory space? Fortunately it is easy but being easy has also ramifications if you stop a Windows XP Service that is needed. To help you with this I have supplied a list of the Windows XP Services that you can safely disable or put in the manual mode. You can find them by going to the Windows XP Services Page.

I have also provided the instructions on how to disable them using the Windows XP Management Console. This list of Windows XP Services will be continually updated as I review each service again Microsoft’s recommendations.

You now can get a USB memorystick up to 32 gigabytes these days and they keep getting bigger so why not use one for backing up your most important data. There are several programs (free ones as well) that can be used to automatically backup your critical information. One free on I use and think it is excellent is “Karen’s Replicator”.

Windows comes with it’s own media player so you can listen to music on your PC and also copy music files with it. It can be used to build a library on your USB memorystick that you can then plug into any PC running windows and listen to your favorite music. You have then effectively a MP3 player. Listen on your PC speakers or plug in headphones.

Like to speed up your PC. Using a USB memorystick if you are running Windows Vista, you can speed up your system using ReadyBoost . You can use the space on a memory stick as additional memory cache to aid the cache on your hard disk. Flash memory is faster than a hard disk, with its physical moving parts. The memory cache provided by ReadyBoost can greatly improve system responsiveness. Using ReadyBoost is easy. You just insert your USB memorystick into your Vista system and follow the on screen prompts to configure and use it.

Want to make your PC more secure? You can use a USB memorystick as a “key” What it can do is lock up your PC whenever you remove the memorystick from the USB port. No-one can then use or access your data until you plug the memory stick back in. There is a little utility called “Predator”  that you can download for free it will key your USB memorystick to your PC.

You can run what are called “Portable Applications” from a USB memorystick. Just think you can take your most used applications and run them on any PC specially useful if you do not own a laptop. Applications such as “OpenOffice”, Firefox can be made portable. Others can be found at PortableApps. You can virtually install just about everything you need to run things as if you were on your own PC.

If you want the complete thing you can even run a whole windows or linux operating system from a USB memorystick. Not for the faint hearted though and can be a bit ticklish to do. There are some guides around to assist in this endeavor.

Are you a Web developer? did you know that with Server2Go, you can run a Web server that supports Apache, PHP, MySQL, and Perl from a memory stick. Server2Go runs on all versions of Windows, supports all the common browsers, and is free. The benefits of having a portable Web server on a USB memorystick are numerous. You will find more information on the Server2Go site.

I will tell you something about new PC’s and laptops. They have something in them that is mechanical.
Yes a hard drive. They are these days a sophisticated item but they are still mechanical.

My first PC was made by Wang. My first laptop was made by Wang. (I have still got it. Probably a collector’s item now). Some people may remember Wang. They were one of the original Word processing systems companies. Way before MS Word and they were good. (At the time) Well, they produced a PC. It had a 10 megabyte disk drive and I thought that was BIG. Yes it was mechanical and yes today’s disks are still mechanical. Now we consider gigabyte disk drives small.

Eventually disk drives will disappear as static (means it does move anything but bits) ram (for the un-initiated “random access memory”) becomes so cheap that this will do away with them.

In the meantime you have your mechanical disk drive.

Well to get these “bits”, in which a number of them make up your file, a mechanical head has to move over a recorded surface. Occasionally it may pick a bit up wrong. That’s OK the manufacturers knew this would happen so put in things called “checksums” that can up to a certain amount actually figure out what was missing and replace it. Good, that’s fine.

What about those it can’t? Well hard luck you have a corrupted file! The only way to fix that is to restore it from somewhere. But that is another subject. The main thing is that if this is some sort of system file it may cause some problems and slow down your PC until it either sorts itself out or gives up. (WOW a system crash) That makes a system really slow (like stopped).

Back to your slow system.

Let me explain the manufacture of hard disks. One thing the manufacturers know is that the disks they manufacture will have defects on the surfaces of them. They produce millions of them. Do they chuck away the ones with defects? No! Each one goes through a test. As they are tested and a defective part of the disk is found they use a bit of smarts and make that bit of disk unavailable. If the number of defective parts go over a certain number then they reject the disk.

It may be that you have a labeled 80gbyte disk. But in actual fact you may have only a 79.9999 gigabyte disk. What the heck, what’s a few bits between friends.

Unfortunately, sorry I had to say that word. Parts of the disk surface may become defective afterwards. You may not know it until months (or even a year) after you have bought your state of the art PC or laptop.

Why?

Well when you first got your PC you may only have used 6 or 7 gigabytes of your 80 gigabyte disk. Over the months or year you put on all your good stuff, (photo’s, games and such) Your disk gradually uses 30 gigabytes. (Got lots of photos you know) Then bingo one photo is written across the defective part.

One thing about windows xp is that it goes checking all the time around the used portion of the disk. It hits the defective part and hey hold on have a look at this again, and again, and again as it tries to recover the file. Eventually if it can’t it times out. Wow your system springs back to life again. Now if this happens to a system file it may take longer. Your system may not crash but it will take longer checking it out.

This can manifest (yes, I know some posh words) in a slow startup when you first switch on. This is because windows does a lot of checking at this time. Unfortunately windows keeps a lot of this stuff to itself.

That’s what these purveyors of good stuff to fix everything up for you depend on.

Now I have got all the crap out of the way I had better tell you what you should do first before forking anything out. (money that is)

This is pertaining to windows xp but most of it is also relevant to other windows OS’s

The first thing is checking that damn disk for bad spots and corrupted files.

Perform the following:

1. On your start menu (bottom left corner) place your mouse pointer and click the right mouse button.
2. Place your mouse pointer on “explore” and click the right mouse button.
3. You should now have a screen showing your file structure.
4. Place your mouse over the part that probable says “Local Disk (C)
(Whatever it is called it should have the (C)

5. Left click and it should highlight. Right click the mouse while it is selected.

6. You should get another menu. Right at the bottom you will see “properties”. Left click it.

7. You should get a box that shows a pretty circle with blue and pink segments in it. (If you have more pink than blue then you are in a good state space wise on your disk. If you have only a small sliver of pink then you are in some other trouble. Send me a comment if you want)

8. At the top of the box there is a menu. Click “Tools” with your left mouse button.

9. You should come up with another box. In it there should be a selection “Check Now”. Left click it.

10. In the box that appears tick both of the “check disk” options with your left mouse buttons and then click “start”

11. You should then come up with a message with a load of waffle. Just click “yes”

12. Your system will now restart and start doing good things. You can what if you want. You may or not see some errors coming up. It may say restoring, it may say deleting things but just let it ramble on.

13. What it will do is make unavailable bad parts, it may be able to restore some parts from a special segment of disk.

14. Eventually it will restart. This may take a while depending on the size of the disk so it is best to schedule it when you do not want to use it.

Now your windows xp slow startup may have improved may even be fixed. There are other factors that affect windows xp slow startup which I cover in other articles in this blog.

If after doing all the things that are recommended (and don’t cost you anything) then maybe you should look at the registry file as this can be a prime source of Windows XP slowing down.

The windows regedit registry editor is a utility provided by Microsoft that enables you to change information in the windows registry file.

The Windows registry file is a database that contains all the configuration settings in the Windows operating system. It holds the profile for every user who is registered on your PC, information about all internal and external hardware attached to your computer, information about all of the applications installed, and the details on every configuration setting made throughout windows.

Because the Windows registry is an essential part of the operating system, you need to be extremely careful anytime you make a change to it. You should only do any altering if you are proficient and/or have explicit instructions how to alter a component within it.

Below are a few of the things you should know about the windows registry. This will help you avoid the consequences of making a mistake when editing the windows registry.

How the registry is laid out.

The Windows registry is contains five main sections. Theys are called “keys”, each containing specific kinds of information about windows. Each section has a nested folder structure containing files which has settings called values. Here are the five main keys in the Windows registry:

• HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT – Contains information about file types.

• HKEY_CURRENT_USER – Contains copies of data stored in HKEY_USERS about the user who is currently logged on.

• HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE – Represents information about all the hardware and software that is installed on the computer.

• HKEY_USERS – Contains the account information of users installed on your PC.

• HKEY_CURRENT_CONFIG – Contains copies of all the information from all the other root keys that pertain to the currently session.

Backing up the registry.

It is essential that before attempting to change anything in the registry you should make a backup copy of it. You can then restore it to it’s previous state if you make a mistake. There are several ways of  backing up the registry.

• Use Windows XP’s Backup Utility and select System State.

• Create a Restore Point.

• Launch the Registry Editor, select the key you plan to edit, pull down the File menu, and choose the Export command.

The Regedit Registry Editor.

To view and modify the registry, you can use the Regedit Registry Editor. To startup regedit click on “Start” – “Run” and then type “regedit” in the run text box, then click OK

Searching the registry.

If you know the name of the subkey or value you want to edit in the registry, but you don’t know exactly where it’s located, you can use the “find” tool. To access it from within the regedit registry Editor, just press [Ctrl]F. When you see the find box, type the name of the subkey or value you want to search for in the box. You can also check the boxes in the “Look At panel” (Keys, Values, or Data) for better targeting of your search.

Using registry favorites.

If you regularly edit the registry, you can use the favorites menu to save yourself time looking for any deeply nested subkeys. The Registry Editor’s Favorites menu allows you to bookmark any location you find. When you make a registry change that you may want to return to later, just pull down the Favorites menu and select the “Add To” Favorites command

Cleaning the registry.

After a period of time, the registry can become full of orphaned or corrupt keys and values, This can make the registry inefficient and slow yet still function. There are many registry cleaners out there that perform admirably. One I recommend and use is “Errorfix”. This cleaner not only cleans up the registry but provides a lot of other functions as well such as removing unwanted files from your recycle bin.

Monitoring your registry activity.

When you installing new applications, the installation process can make a many changes to the registry. If you would like to keep track of how the registry is changed there is a free Microsoft utility you can use called RegMon. It runs in the background and tracks registry I/O operations. It will then provide a report on the status of those operations, which can come in handy if you need to track problems.

Just remember the regedit registry editor is not to be fooled about with as you can create havoc if not used correctly.

As I have mentioned in previous articles as your PC gets older and older and you install more programs and data your PC gets progressively slower and slower. One reason could be because your hard disk is becoming more and more active. This hard disk activity may be in a lot of cases, unnecessary, often being caused by programs and the  system causing windows hard disk thrashing. I will show you how to determine where this activity is occurring and who is causing it.

Most people think that hard disk corruption or lack of disk space is the main cause of most system performance problems, but disk time and activity is just as much a performance factor. Disk time is a percentage of time that the hard disk is in use. If the hard disk is running at 80 percent of the time, you can be certain that PC performance being affected.

One other thing to consider is the average disk queue length. This refers to the number of processes that are waiting to use the hard disk. Using the disk time percentage and the disk queue length will tell you how much the hard disk is being used and also if heavy usage is causing a problem. If for example the disk time is running at 40 percent and the average disk queue length is two or less, then your hard disk is keeping up with the requests for access.

If the percentage of disk time is above 80 percent and the average disk queue length is two or more, it means that you PC processes are waiting for the hard disk to become available. If a process has to wait for any component to become available you will experience a drop in performance of your PC.

To determine if you have a windows hard disk thrashing problem, you need to measure the percentage of disk time and the average disk queue length.

Before you start this procedure you should perform a full disk defragmentation on all your hard disk partitions. This will ensure that all the files are contiguous and that the hard disk can perform optimum reads and writes of the files.

After you have performed the defragmentation run the Performance Monitor utility by going to

Start > Control Panel > Administrative Tools and then Performance.

When the Performance Monitor opens there may be some monitor counters already running, (shown at bottom right), click on each in turn and then delete to remove them. As each counter uses some resources it is best to have as few running as possible to make the measurements more accurate.

In the Performance Monitor window perform the following:

• Click the + icon to open the Add Counters box.

• Click on the Performance Object dropdown list and select PhysicalDisk. This will bring up a list of physical disk counters.

• Select the %Disk Time counter from the list and click the All Instances button. This will ensure the system will measure the performance of all the hard drives.

• Click the Add button to add the counter to the Monitor.

• Select Avg. Disk Queue Length from the counter list, and again the All Instances button. Click the Add button then the Close button. The performance monitor will then begin analyzing the disk usage, as shown below.

Looking at the monitor results, you can see that the lines shown on the graph correspond to the counters that you have selected. In the example above, the pink line is predominant. The pink line is the average disk queue length for the drives C: and D: which are in this case partitions on hard drive Zero. A more accurate value can be obtained by selecting the counter that you want to see in more detail.

So how do you track down the process that is using all the disk resources?  The first thing you need to do is bring up the Windows Task Manager. You can do this by pressing -

[Ctrl][Alt][Delete]

on your keyboard holding each down in turn. The Windows task manager shows you the utilization of resources that all the processes running in the system use.

Windows task manager usually has some monitor counters selected as standard but disk usage may not be one of the them. You can select which counter you want to see as follows:

• Click on the “Processes” tab at the top. This will show a list of processes that are running on your PC.

• Click on “View” in the menu at the top then on the “Select Columns”.

• In the window that comes up deselect everything then select “I/O Read bytes” and “I/O Write Bytes” then “OK”

You should now only see these counters as show below.

You should now look to see if any of the counters against the processes are changing at a rapid rate. The counters should only change occasionally or not at all. If you see one that is constantly changing, then that the process may be the one that is hogging your PC’s disk resources.

To kill a process that is hogging a resource, right click on the process and then select “End Process” in the menu that appears.

If the particular process is a part of the Windows XP operating system, there’s a good chance that the high disk usage is caused by thrashing. High disk usage can be caused by “swapping and thrashing”

When the system moves memory blocks between physical and virtual memory (normally called Paging) this is swapping. This is a normal process in Windows XP. Virtual memory is space used on hard disk and as extra memory. This is done when another process requires “Real” memory and there is not enough empty space in real memory to place it. In this case the system will put a process that is in real memory down to the paging file on disk to create the space.

Windows hard disk thrashing is caused by high real physical and virtual memory swapping. This is one reason why it is recommended that as much real memory be installed on your PC as possible.

However, if the disk usage is traced to a non-Windows process, then you may have problems with an individual service/program.

If you eliminate a process you feel is causing excessive disk usage, processor time and memory will also be affected.

You can now see how you can track and identify a program or process that may be causing excessive disk time usage and how it degrades the system. Using the Performance Monitor to measure both disk time and average queue length, you can see if the hard disk is being excessively used by the system’s processes. Using the Widows Task Manager you can further determine which process that may be causing the problem.

There is an optimizer that helps in this regard. It is called “The Perfect Optimizer” which not only cleans the windows registry but also does other tasks in cleaning up your hard disk. Go to “The Perfect Optimizer” to review it

A firewall is a piece of software that helps to stop hackers, viruses, and worms that try to reach your computer over the Internet. If you are a home user or small-business user, using desktop firewall software is the most effective and important first step you can take to help protect your computer.

Without a firewall these malignant things can access your PC and cause havoc by altering programs, installing “keyboard loggers” that watch what you are typing in and sending it back to them and a host of other nasty things.

The desktop firewall software should stop entry to your PC and also stop outbound connections that you have not authorized from your PC. Unfortunately it is here where all desktop firewall software are not equal.

We should first have a look at the firewall that comes with Windows XP. The Windows XP firewall is standard with all windows versions. Windows XP Firewall does a reasonable job of blocking malicious inbound attacking traffic but does not stop outbound traffic. This means that if your PC has the nasties in it already it will not stop them connecting to external programs that have not been authorized. There are many ways other than through the Internet that these nasties can get into your computer. (Did your friend send you all those beautiful photo’s on a CD). Did you download that program you wanted in zip format?

Microsoft says that it is not in their purview to stop outbound traffic and that it is the responsibility of the owner of the PC. Did they forget that the vast majority of people owning PC’s with Windows installed are home users who know little or nothing how their PC works. They just want to use them “Microsoft” Just like they use their car.

But still having Windows XP firewall turned on is better than no firewall at all. Windows will tell you if it is not turned on when you startup your computer, usually by a balloon coming up warning you and giving you a chance to turn it on by clicking on it.

So how does desktop firewall software basically work?

The firewall monitors all traffic on the connections to the Internet for which it is enabled. The firewall keeps track of all communications that were started from your computer, and it prevents any unsolicited traffic from reaching your computer.

This means if you have, through your browser, accessed a website you have given explicit permission to receive stuff back from that website. If any other program tries to sent stuff back to you then the desktop firewall software says “hey” you have not been requested “shove off”

If necessary, the firewall itself will open ports and allow your computer to receive traffic that you have specifically requested, such as a Web page for which you have clicked the address.

A “port” is a networking term that identifies the point at which a type of network traffic reaches your computer. The exact ports that you open depend on the type of traffic you want to send and receive.

If you have desktop firewall software installed that does not allow “outbound” traffic that you have not initiated it will inform you and usually give you the opportunity to allow it. It will also allow you to enter it into an allowed database for future requests or into a not allowed database that will block it forever. All unsolicited outbound requests are managed in this manner.

So do you need a firewall that blocks all unsolicited inbound and outbound traffic. You certainly do I recommend this  Desktop Firewall Software that covers all aspects of protecting against those malicious beings out there trying to attack your computer. All recommendations I make come with a full money back guarantee.

Wilf Staton.

A lots of advice is given about windows xp freezing from all around good or bad to no avail. Eventually you may give up and reboot the PC maybe losing all your work. Unfortunately the computer industry lives on all the wrong advice and the just don’t know syndrome.

There are several things you can do to maybe stop your windows xp freezing or to get it going again, clear up your computer and get it back to its best performing position. Some I have written about in my blog that should be performed regularly but the ones I am going to describe below are those when you suddenly get windows xp freezing and hitting a slow spell on your PC.

First the windows operating system is getting more and more complex, multiple programs can be run simultaneously one that may be causing your computer to freeze up and slow down. So lets see how we can find these stuck programs and get rid of them.

On Windows XP (and Vista), press Ctrl+Shift+Esc, which will bring up the Windows xp Task Manager. It will normally come up with the “Applications” tab showing.  Under this tab you will find a list of all the programs you are running at this time. Select each one in turn (excepting the one you are working with that has slowed down) and at the bottom of the “Windows Task Manager” click the “end task” button. If the program fails to stop do not worry just go to each of the others and stop them. If they all close go back to the program you are using and see if it has got out of its malaise.

If your program is still slow or windows xp freezing is still evident go back to the “Windows XP Task Manager” and select the  “Processes” Tab. You will now see a list of all the programs running on your PC.  Click on the “CPU” column this will sort the CPU “usage” in descending order if it doesn’t click the CPU column again.

View the CPU usage column for a while and watch to see if any program is using a high percentage of CPU time. Basically if you are doing nothing the only high usage should be the System Idle Process”

If you find another program that is consistently using a high percentage of CPU time then it is possible that this is a hung program and is the one causing your windows xp freezing problem. It is also possible that it may be the program you are using.

Just click on the process that is using a high level of CPU time and then the “End Process” button at the bottom of the “Windows XP Task Manager” window. Note this will instantaneously shut down the application and you will not be able to save any files that may have been open.

Windows keeps a log of just about everything that happens on your computer and is a good way of possibly finding what programs constantly cause problems on your PC. You may not understand everything contained in the log but you may get some useful hints at what is causing you problems. It certainly may give some indication on what is causing your windows xp freezing problem.

To view the system log, go to Control Panel. (Start > settings > Control panel) If it says “switch to classic view” in the left column, click that. Then click “administrative tools” and then “event viewer”. When the event viewer opens, select “Application” or “System” from the column on the left. You can then scroll down the log and look for warnings (yellow exclamation mark) or errors (red cross). Double-clicking on one of these entries will show you the detail of the error. The contents may not mean much to you but you can search for the error wording on Google to find out what other people did to stop it from happening again.

Another area of slow downs of PC’s is “Free Apps” Some major computer makers love to load up their computers with “free” software. This free software can be most annoying as it keeps bothering you to subscribe to the full version and may slow your computer down if it auto-loads at startup. These free programs can even conflict with new programs you have installed, again causing your windows xp freezing problem. These are sometimes of such an annoyance that many specialized programs have been developed to help you delete free trials and other rubbish that comes on your computer.

Another annoyance are some security suites that really get their roots deep into the core of Windows XP. At least one is usually loaded as a free trial when you buy your new computer. If you have decided to use a different security suite (Virus, spyware etc) you need to get rid of the current one and preferably before you install your preferred one. Symantec makes a special tool to delete all versions of its Norton security suites (tinyurl.com/killnorton), as does McAfee (tinyurl.com/killmcafee) and Zone Alarm (download available at tinyurl.com/killzonealarm). You can find removal tools for other security suites by Googling the brand to find the removal tool”.

If your hard drive is almost full, although it may not actually cause the windows xp freezing problem it can dramatically slow down your computer, because when your computer runs out of its high-speed memory for running software, it has to start using the hard drive as memory. If the computer has plenty of free space, it can use large continuous blocks of space for this “swap” memory. However, if the hard drive is very full, the computer has to hunt for vacant blocks of space to use this can take some time slowing your PC.

Sometimes, there are huge amounts of space taken up on your hard drive by things like downloaded movies, MP3 music and so forth that you’ve watched, listened and forgotten about. Removing them can see great speed improvements. Disk space analyzers do a great job of showing the biggest files on your disk and helping you delete them (be careful what you delete). On Windows, WinDirStat works well doing this. You can download it free from: http://windirstat.info/

If you continue to have a windows xp freezing problem I suggest you read through all the other articles I have written on the windows slow problem on the rest of my blog.

Never mind I have a solution for you. Why don’t you group all similar program icons together and stick them into a folder that has an icon itself.  So all those photo folder shortcut icons you can put in a folder called “photos” and reduce the clutter.  Just follow me this way and I will show you how it’s done.

First you need a folder. “Simple” just find an empty space on your desktop (if you can find an empty space) and right click on it.  Up pops a window. In that window you will see a menu item called “new”. Put your mouse pointer over it and whey!! Up pops another window (gee this is fun) Left mouse click on the menu item called “folder”. Wadoyouknow, a new icon appears called “New Folder” on your desktop. Now, if you can find it, (It really does look like a folder, y’know like those you put in a filing cabinet.) you can change the name.

To change the name, just place your mouse pointer over the name and left click once. Then click again. Don’t double click fast or a bloody great window will open up in your face with nothing in it. Just click then pause then click again. The name will show blue with a white border. While it is like this just start typing in the new name. For this exercise we will use “photo’s”, then just hit enter, return, send or whatever they have decided to call it on your particular keyboard. (We will win one day against those developers who keep trying to confuse us).

Well that done so now we can start moving all those photo icons you have (“Fred’s photos” “our holiday snaps” or whatever into this new folder. I expect you have heard of “click and drag” There may be people who haven’t so I had better explain.

Find one of your photo icons and click on it with your left mouse button but keep holding the button down. Then move your mouse around while holding the button down. Wheee the photo icon moves around all over the place. You had better place it over the new “photo” and release the button before you lose it. God I’ve lost it! No you haven’t it has just gone inside the folder.

Just to ease your mind you can now double click on the folder and a window will come up and you will see the icon you have just put there. Thank goodness for that you thought, I thought I had lost Aunt Fanny’s photos.

Now that you feel comfortable about that, left click on the “x” (upper right corner of the window that opened) to close it. You can then “click and drag” all the other like icons into the new “photo” folder.

Before you get too excited and repeat this operation for other like minded icon groups we had better do something about the folder icon or you will end up with a whole lot of icons looking exactly the same. This may make it even harder to find what you want than before.

Let’s change the icon. Right click on the new “photo” folder. A window appears and right at the bottom left click on “properties” Another window will open, at the top menu click on “Customize” you will then see a button “Change Icon” left click on it. Up pops another window showing a whole heap of icons. You can now have lots of fun trying to figure out which one you would like to use. There are about 200 of them. When you have finally decided (might take you all day) just click on it with the left button to highlight it then click “OK” then click “OK” again. Hey presto the folder icon has now changed to the one you decided upon.

And that’s it folks you have started your desktop cleanup. All you have to do now is repeat for all the other groups of similar icons. Have fun.

By the way now you have got rid of a whole lot of icons from you desktop you may find that your PC may startup a bit faster. It doesn’t have to go looking for all those short cuts or whatever to sprinkle across the screen. Aren’t you glad you did a desktop cleanup.

They were talking about a bit of software that you could buy that allowed you to access websites while windows was starting up. The software came about because some peoples computers took so long to start up with windows that this software made them more productive. Time was not wasted while they waited for windows to finish starting up.

I was flabbergasted. They did not state how long these PC’s took to startup windows but they must be taking a long time to make this software worthwhile specially seeing that they mentioned that it cost $50 – $60 a year to subscribe.

Windows xp slow down is considered if a PC takes more than a minute or two to startup windows xp. If it takes as long as to make windows xp slow enough to warrant a program to make up for lost time then there is something drastically wrong with one’s computer.

I can tell you, to check and fix your windows xp slow startup problem would cost you a sight less than $60 (and this is only one time).

But first consider how old your PC is. Is it getting a bit long in the tooth. Windows has grown in size and complexity over the years, even more so over the last couple. Older PC’s just cannot manage the overheads now being imposed by the windows operating system and the application programs now being developed.

If your PC is over 4 – 5 years old think about replacing the box. They are a lot cheaper these days and you will get at least 10 times the power from the most modest PC Box you can buy today costing 200 – 300 bucks. You don’t need to buy all the other stuff you already have.

Anyway there are real things you can do to alleviate your windows xp slow startup problem and believe me if you have a start up problem then you also have a problem with windows running slow when your PC has finally finished starting up.

There are a lot of things you can do like cleaning up your disk, how to defrag your hard drive, fixing up your windows xp registry file and a host of other things. My blog “Windows XP Slow Startup” will show you just what you can do yourself to speed up your PC.

Unfortunately you may have to pay something to fix your problem but if you have to buy a piece of software to enable you to circumnavigate your windows xp slow problem then you are just fooling yourself. You have a problem, fix it, do not just work around it and wear it.