When you buy a new car, you generally don't expect to find the door pockets stuffed with maps or the upholstery already supplied with cookie crumbs and grease stains. However, when you buy a new computer these days, or get assigned one at work, it usually comes preloaded with thousands of software particles in every nook and cranny of your hard drive. Some of the files are parts of programs you use; on a used computer, some are left over from programs and operations long gone.
This chapter helps you figure out which files you can delete or move safely, and which you should leave in place.
Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional assumes you're the sort of person who doesn't want to be bothered by details; it hides many of its own files, and even whole folders. This maneuver has the advantage of keeping you out of areas where you could do significant damage to the computer's operation. On the other hand, if you're reading this chapter, you're probably more curious than the average user, and you want to know more about the system you're working with.
To see everything Windows 2000 has been hiding from you, you have to flip three different switches, shown in Figure 10-1.
Figure 10-1. To get at the hide/show switches, open a desktop folder window and choose Tools→Folder Options→View. In the list of checkboxes, under the heading "Hidden files and folders" (indicated here by the cursor), you'll find buttons that govern these three categories of files and folders.
As described on Section 7.6, most files have three-letter filename extensions that help Windows associate them with their parent applications. By default, Windows hides these extensions, to decrease clutter and to protect the extensions from being inadvertently changed. Nevertheless, you may experience less confusion if you make these filename extensions visible once again, as described in Section 7.6.1.1.
Microsoft hides a large collection of files (mostly in the WINNT folder) that are so important, the computer can't operate without them. By clearing the "Hide protected operating system files" checkbox, you can make these protected files visible, but it's advisable not to do so; moving, renaming, or deleting any of them can make your computer unstable at best, and nonfunctional at worst. If you change or delete one, you may have to reinstall Windows 2000 Professional to make your PC well again.
The most elemental files are the boot files that let Windows 2000 start up. If you make the protected files visible, it's good to know what these files are, if only to prevent you from getting carried away and trying to delete them. These boot files sit in your C: drive's root directory (its main window), and are called Boot.ini, http://Ntdetect.com, and Ntldr; depending on your system's hardware configuration, you may also find Cdldr and Ntbootdd.sys there.
If you change or eliminate any of these files, you'll damage Windows so severely that your computer won't be able to start up. (The sole exception is Boot.ini, a text file that contains the boot menu that appears during the startup sequence. If you know what you're doing, you can make changes to this file without killing your system.)
Hidden files and folders exist in a gray area between filename extensions and system files. Deleting, renaming, or moving a hidden file probably won't make your computer stop working, but it may cause parts of Windows 2000 Pro to fail or perform erratically. (Again, most of these are in the WINNT folder.)
You can make these hidden files reappear by clicking "Show hidden files and folders," as shown in Figure 10-1. When these files are hidden, you'll know of their existence by a report on the status bar (Figure 10-2, top). Even when they show up, hidden folders and files are a ghostly presence (Figure 10-2, bottom).
Figure 10-2. Top: Even when Windows is hiding certain files, the status bar (as shown by the cursor here) lets you know that they're there. Bottom: Though shown, the icons of ordinarily hidden files and folders (such as the Group Policy folder here) are dimmed to indicate that they aren't ordinary run-of-the-mill files.
By default, the installer for Windows 2000 puts Windows 2000 itself in the WINNT folder on your C: drive. This folder and its subfolders contain the thousands of files necessary for the normal operation of Windows 2000. Ignore them. Don't delete or change them unless you know what you're doing (and why you're doing it).
Program files are the files your applications need. They're generally in the C: Program Files folder.
These files aren't protected or hidden, but you should leave them alone. If you no longer want a program, remove it as directed on Section 7.7.4; don't just drag its folder to the Recycle Bin.
POWER USERS' CLINIC : Speeding Up Virtual Memory
Virtual memory lets you keep more programs open than your actual installed RAM could technically handle. So why don't we all buy PCs with just one megabyte of RAM, and use virtual memory to give ourselves 500 MB of simulated RAM on the hard drive?
Because actual memory delivers data hundreds of times faster than a hard drive can. Virtual memory, when used in excess, slows things down. (When used at Microsoft's settings, however, you won't notice any slowdown. Indeed, the Windows 2000 virtual memory scheme constantly adjusts the amount of data stored in the pagefile so that it's no larger than necessary.
If you have administrative rights on your computer, and if your PC has more than one hard drive, you can optimize virtual memory (which may improve your PC's speed) by dividing the pagefile over as many hard drives as possible. Remove the pagefile from slower or heavily accessed drives—especially the drive with the system files. However, don't put pagefiles on more than one partition of the same physical disk drive.
To modify the amount or placement of your virtual memory, start by double-clicking the System applet in the Control Panel. Click the Advanced tab, then the Performance Options button.
In the Performance Options dialog box, you can see the total amount of virtual memory currently allocated. (Generally, the default size of the pagefile is the best one. In any case, don't make the pagefile smaller than the recommended size—1.5 times RAM.) Click the Change button to alter the pagefile configuration. Then, in the Virtual Memory dialog box, make the changes you want. Click OK when finished.
In the example pictured here, the initial configuration (top left) shows that the entire pagefile is on the already crowded C: drive, which is also where Windows 2000 Pro is installed. At lower right, a pagefile has been created on the separate D: drive, and the pagefile on C: has been deleted. You'll have to restart your PC for the change to take effect.
No matter how much memory (RAM, or Random Access Memory) your computer has, Windows 2000 still wants more. Windows uses a scheme called virtual memory, a trick that lets it use hard disk space as simulated memory, to give itself more elbow room when you're running a lot of programs at once. Virtual memory works by swapping chunks of software code into and out of real memory into a file on your hard drive called a pagefile (or swap file).
At the time of installation, Windows 2000 creates a pagefile, usually called pagefile.sys, equal to one-and-a-half times the amount of physical (real) memory your PC has. (There may be more than one pagefile on your computer.)
Temp files are, as you might guess, temporary files created by programs and by the system itself. (These files may store what your document looked like at each stage of your work, for example, so that an application will be ready in case you use the Undo command.) Each user has a Temp folder in his user profile folder (which is in the Documents and Settings folder). Another Temp folder is inside the WINNT folder. Many temporary files have the .tmp extension, though other file types can show up in Temp folders.
Most of the time, an application deletes its own temp files when you choose File→Exit. But if the system crashes or freezes before it has a chance to do this cleanup, you may find orphaned temp files littering your hard drive.
You can manually delete temp files that are no longer in use, but it's a tedious chore. A more efficient approach is to use Disk Cleanup periodically (see below). It seeks out and shows you temporary files, compressible old files (see Figure 10-3), temporary Internet files, and any other files cluttering your disks. You can then direct the program to delete some or all of those files.
