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Another space hog is the good old recycle bin. If you right-click on the recycle-bin you can change the setting for the amount of disc space reserved for it. If you have a big drive, set this to 2 or 3 percent.
There are a few other things you can do to help system performance. One is to remove all the files that are created in the temporary folders. I once found 9MB of data in \windows\temp and 10MB in \temp. That's a lot of disk space for files that have only been used once.
For best gaming performance, you never want to have anything running in the background. Unfortunately, Windows 98 sets up a lot of programs to AutoStart when you boot the system. Virus checkers, in particular, tend to interact badly with games. If you have a virus checker, you may want to deactivate it during gameplay, then turn it back on when you're done. Another problem-child background app can be monitors, like those loaded by Norton Utilities or Nuts and Bolts. Take special care to deactivate crash-protection software while playing games. They work pretty well with standard Windows applications, but a game is a different beast altogether. Finally, if your system has bogged down incredibly and nothing you do can perk it up again, you may be at the point where you'll need to do a clean reinstall of Windows. I don't have the space to cover it in detail here, though. Note that you don't need to reformat your hard drive, but you do need to boot to the DOS prompt and remove the Windows directory. But before you do that, back up any e-mail files, especially if you use Outlook 98. Also back up your "favorites" folder (if you're an Internet Explorer user), your dial-up networking settings, and your password (.pwd) files. Then make absolutely sure you have all your latest drivers and applications-install CDs, because you'll need to reinstall everything from scratch. You can save some effort by copying \win95 or \win98 (depending on your operating system of choice) from the CD to the hard drive. That way, you can run setup right from the hard drive. It may be useful to do a refresh install first. That is, run Windows setup from within Windows. Sometimes that will do the trick, especially with Windows 98. At this point, you've had a taste of the things you can do to improve your rig's performance. There's a lot more information available on the Net and in other Ziff-Davis computer publications. I've found these web sites to be useful: Graphics:
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