Article 10: Spring cleaning for your computer

Well, it's that time of the year again when we have to clean out our closets, get rid of every speck of dust, and whip the house into shape. So this is a good opportunity to get rid of some unwanted stuff that is taking up space in your computer as well.

Light cleaning: the Recycle Bin

The Recycle Bin is your computer's trash can. Let's remove unnecessary icons or files from your desktop.

Use the click-and-drag method as follows:
1. On your desktop, click an item you want to remove and continue holding down the mouse.
2. Drag the item to the Recycle Bin, which is probably on the left side of your desktop.
3. When the Recycle Bin is highlighted, release the mouse.
-- The icon or file disappears from the desktop into the bin.

But what if you regret throwing it out? No problem.
When you move things to the Recycle Bin, you are not really throwing them away, but rather moving them from one location on your computer to another (kind of like throwing something into a trash can in your house, but not taking it outside for collection).

You can retrieve what you threw away by doing the following:
1. Double-click the Recycle Bin to open it.
2. Using the RIGHT-click button of your mouse, click the item you want to retrieve.
3. From the menu that appears, LEFT-click Restore.
-- The item leaves the Recycle Bin and returns to its original location.

Heavy cleaning: the Disk Cleanup accessory

When you create a document, read an email that contains an attachment, download programs, or surf the internet, your computer stores temporary files that take up space on your hard drive.

Windows provides a way to permanently remove these files. Do the following:

1. From the Start button at the bottom left corner of the desktop, click All Programs (or Program Files) > Accessories > System Tools > Disk Cleanup.
2. The Select Drive window opens, and, if you have more than one drive on your computer, you can select the one you want to “clean”. Choose a drive (for most of us, it will be labeled C:/), and click OK.

The Disk Cleanup program searches the selected drive for files that can be deleted. This may take a few minutes, so be patient.

Once the process is complete, your cleanup options are displayed.

Some are already checked while others are blank. Usually, the following options are selected by default:
   • Temporary Internet files (web pages stored on your hard disk for quick viewing)
   • Recycle Bin (files you have deleted from your computer)
   •Temporary Files (temporary information stored by programs when you use them).
If you click on an option with your mouse, you will see a description of it in the bottom part of the window. This description helps you decide if you want to remove the files from your computer. The Disk cleanup window also computes the amount of space you will free up if you remove the selected items.

If you are not sure what to delete, it's probably safe to accept the default selections. Click OK, the files are removed, and the cleanup is completed.

Q and A: What is WinZip, and how do I use it?

WinZip is a very popular program. (If you do not already have WinZip, you can download it from http://tucows.netvision.net.il.) You can use it to store files in a more compressed form inside an archive on your computer, and even password-protect that archive if it contains sensitive material that you want to protect from prying eyes. If you have a large document or a picture to send via email, you can compress it inside a WinZip archive and attach that archive to your email message.

To create a WinZip archive:
1. Double click the Winzip icon to open it.

2. Click New; name the archive you are creating and browse to the location where you want it to be saved. In the example below, I am saving a Zip archive called ‘april’ on my Desktop.

3. Click OK. The Winzip window opens.

4. Browse to the folder where the documents are that you wish to add to the archive (in the example below, ‘pesach2004’). Select the files that you want to add to the archive.

4. If the documents are confidential, click the Password button to password-protect the file. You will be asked to enter the same password twice to ensure that it is entered correctly.

5. Click Add.
All the documents you selected are now listed within thr archive. Anything that is password protected appears with a plus sign.The WinZip window also shows you how much smaller the files have become.

6. Click the X in the top-right corner to close WinZip. Your archive is created and saved.

When your email arrives at its destination, assuming the other person also has WinZip installed on their computer, extracting the files is easy.
1. Simply double-click the attachment; WinZip opens, asking you to browse to the destination where you want to store the file.
2. Choose the destination, click the extract button, and the zip files are stored in the computer.