How many neat people do you know who keep a messy computer? Or someone whose sock drawer is color-coded, but whose hard drive looks like a junkyard after a tornado? Spring is a good time to give your computer a tuneup. You'll need a file and disk utilities software package. There are several good ones; I prefer Norton Utilities from Symantec ($130). I don't know if it's the very best, but I've been using it for years and have never had a problem it couldn't handle. There are versions for DOS, Windows, Windows95 and Mac.
Here are the four steps to a thorough computer cleaning and tune-up:
Scan for viruses: Most home computers probably stay virus-free, but an occasional checkup is always good. Unless you're sharing lots of floppies and files with friends and strangers, all you need is a general-purpose virus scanner.
Good shareware choices are McAfee's Viruscan for PCs, or Disinfectant for Macs. Norton - Symantec also sells virus utilities, if you want to spend $50-$100.
Back up your files: When was the last time you backed up your hard drive? I thought so; I'm just as remiss. If your computer is important to you, you need to back it up.
Most PCs and Macintosh Performas purchased in the last couple of years include backup software. But since backing up a 500 megabyte hard drive requires dozens and dozens of floppies, most users permanently postpone the job.
An alternative is using a tape or removable hard drive system. Iomega, which sells the very popular, under-$200 ZIP drive, also has a new low-priced tape backup product. The Ditto Easy sells for about $150 and stores 800 megabytes of compressed data, enough for a bulging familiy computer. Versions are available for PC and Mac.
Backing up is important before proceeding to the next step, since even the most careful cleaning operation will probably discard an important file or two.
Clean out old files: This is the hard part of spring cleaning. Deciding what to discard on a family computer can lead to serious squabbles. My rule is: if it hasn't been touched in three months, it's history.
Documents are easy. Buy some floppies and store them there. Games and programs are tougher; installing an application scatters files all over your computer. Finding and eliminating the right ones can be a tough job.
On the Mac, the process is simpler than on the PC. Check in the system folder, in the extensions and preferences folders. Be careful what you eliminate. If you have a copy of the freeware Extensions Manager, you can disable suspect system folder files, then restart and discard them if your computer and applications still work properly.
On the PC, you probably should use an uninstall program. I prefer Microhelp's Uninstaller ($45) for its thoroughness.
This utility tells you what applications are installed on your hard drive. You choose which to eliminate and the program sweeps through the computer, killing all the associated program and data files. (Along the way, it gives you plenty of warnings, just in case you change your mind.)
It also helps fix your system configuration files, so your computer doesn't go haywire during boot-up, looking for some file you've wiped out.
A surprising number of Windows users think that deleting a program group or program item deletes the actual files; others will use file manager to wipe out a program's directories, leaving orphan files in the windows directories.
Norton Utilities can scan your hard drive and eliminate worthless files. On a busy computer, wiping orphan files can free up a couple megabytes of space.
Optimize your drive: As files are created and deleted on a hard drive, the data on the drive can become fragmented. This doesn't mean you'll lose your data, only that the drive takes longer to find it and show it to you.
Optimising (also called defragmenting) can improve drive performance, but always back up your data before doing this. I have defragmented many drives with Norton without mishap, but if the computer crashes during optimization, chances are good you'll have to reformat the drive.
Before optimising, you should run a disk integrity program. Norton Disk Doctor does a better job than DOS's SCANDISK or the Mac's Disk First Aid, and is easier to use.
E-mail Charles Brewer with questions, comments and suggestions at cbrewer@enquirer.com.