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How To Protect Yourself Against Computer Crashes
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To prevent crashes, you need to look at your whole system. Here are key areas to look at. Operating system. If you have a wintel (Windows/Intel) machine, you have a choice of two operating systems. Those are DOS (which is the underlying OS of WinCRASH--oops, I mean Windows 95, Windows 98, and Windows Me) and Windows NT (NT, 2k, XP). There is no reason to run Windows 9x on any computer that is less than 2 years old, unless you are running the older game CDs or a laptop that is low on RAM. The false argument that NT costs more conveniently ignores many things, such as the fact you must buy quite a few third party programs to put the missing pieces into Windows 9x, while with NT these pieces are built-in. RAM. Anything less than 64 MB of RAM, and you'll be dipping into your "virtual RAM," which runs about one 1,000 as fast as your RAM. This means longer execution cycles, timing problems, logjams on your bus, and more crashes. Bad RAM. Hey, it's always possible. Pay attention to that RAM test when you boot up. Hard drives. It's best to have your program files on one physical drive, your temporary files and pagefile on a second, and your data files on a third. However, dual-drive machines are far more common than triple-drive machines, and single-drive (ugh!) machines are even more common, still. If you have a single-drive machine, buy an extra hard drive, and partition it so you can devote 1 GB to temp files and another GB to your page file. This will dramatically speed up your machine, and it will reduce crash frequency, too. Keep your hard drives defragmented. How often should you defragment? Run defragmentation at least once a week. If you recently deleted many files, run it again. Run Scandisk or some other similar hard drive utility to check for bad sectors on your drive(s). These cause crashes, too. Scandisk will also check for lost clusters. Choose the delete option. Drive organization. Tons of temp files, too many files in your root directory, and the default "keep my frequently-changing files in the same folder as my operating system files" all cause crashes. Relocate your user Profiles, Favorites, Temp, Temporary Internet, and other such files to their own partition or at least their own folder. Go into regedit and change from C:\WINNT or C:\Windows as the default to something like C:\Mystuff or C:\0me. Long filenames for folders or directories. Microsoft won't tell you this, but they don't support long filenames, even in NT, as seamlessly as they would have you believe. Go beyond 8 characters, and you increase the likelihood of a crash because the resources required to read even one extra character are more than what it takes to read the first 8!. Change Program Files to Programs, and you are on your way to better computing. This can be a hassle, though, because not all of your shortcuts, macros, etc., will respond to Explorer's name change utility. So, this is a "choose your poison" strategy that you should employ only when you want the ultimate in speed an reliability from your machine. Cheap parts. Buy parts that carry NT certification. Period. Screen savers. These don't save your screen, but they do induce crashes by hogging resources. You can choose between cute and functional--it's your computer. However, screen savers and crashes go hand in hand. If you are just dead set on a screen saver, at least avoid the kind that allow you to run text banners. These use highly complex algorithms that place a huge drain on your system. Power glitches. What? You don't have a UPS? I'm not talking about one of those $12 surge strips. Get a battery backup unit, like the kind made by APC, Best Power, or other major names. I use a 1 kVA APC unit for my PC, but a unit a fourth of that size is sufficient. The cost is not much. Make sure you provide surge protection for data lines (such as phone lines going to your modem). What to do about frequent crashes. Keep notes on what you did just before a crash. If a single program makes you crash, manually uninstall it (run regedit), and then see if your crashes go away. If they do not, then it may be because this program loaded in DLLs that aren't quite right for your system. To cure that, you may have to do a repair reinstall of your operating system and the latest service pack. Good luck. If your computer makes a clunking sound and then crashes, you have hard drive control or physical hard drive problems. The cure is to reload your operating system, minus any service packs, and disable all TSRs (terminate and stay resident programs, such as screen savers and various utilities). Then, over a period of several user sessions, add in service packs and utilities. Forget the screen saver. |
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Working the Windows DesktopThe whole desktop approach ignores the fact that a computer's hard drive(s) are the electronic version of a paper filing cabinet. It also ignores the fact that people store a huge amount of files in that system. And it ignores a few dozen other facts relevant to using a computer. It's just a bad approach. The desktop assumes you don't care what files you actually work on. It opens apps, not files, and this is the pathway to problems. You can inadvertently be revising the wrong thing, if you can even find it in the first place. What you should do instead is use Windows Explorer. Microsoft tends to hide this, but it should be your standard interface with your computer, unless you don't mind working blind. You can always right mouse click the Start button to invoke it, but you should add Windows Explorer to your Quick Launch bar and several other menus in Windows. The default settings for Windows Explorer defy logic. Change these so you can actually see what files you are looking at. Enable it to show you the file extensions (unclick the insane "Hide extensions" box that is, stupidly enough, checked by default though actually there is never any reason to ever check this box). Select the option to show details. Now, you will be able to see your file size, file date, and other useful information. If you right click around a bit, you can find quite a bit of functionality in Windows Explorer. If you haven't been using this interface previously, make a point of using it now. If you always open files from within Windows Explorer, you will always be able to see all available files and select the right one. Use Windows Explorer to set up your filing system as if it's a paper filing cabinet. Save all files either on the data drive (dual hard drive machine) or in a folder on a single hard drive machine. Do NOT save files to the default locations. These never make any sense. They are typically within your applications, which is a dumb place to save them. That's how you end up with corrupted data files and it also makes file backups difficult. For single-drive users, an easy solution is to create a folder called 0files as your top-level data folder. The zero means it will show up at the top of your file list, making things easy for you. Below this folder, create you filing structure. Never store anything at the root of this folder. Think of it as the shell of a five-drawer filing cabinet and don't toss stuff in the bottom. Always put files in folders that are in drawers. With a good filing structure in place, you will always be able to find your files by simply clicking right to them. So think this out as you go and follow a good taxonomy. It's a much more effective way to work than how the zombies at Microsoft envision people working.
Recovering hard drive spaceEven with today's huge drives, people sometimes run out of hard drive space. The steps below can recover wasted space.
There are other steps you can take, but if, at this point, you are still low on disk space you really need to add another hard drive or upgrade one that's in your system. Or, another very cool option, is to add a My Ditto system. See our Review of the Dane my Ditto network server. |