Tweak Now Power Pack (free) and Tune Up Utilities (not free)

Thanks so much for your reply.
I just want to keep this computer cleaned up as much as possible. I use Windows XP Pro Media Edition Version 2 Service Pack 3, AMD Athlon 64X2 dual core processor 3800+, 2.00 GHz, 1.87 GB of ram. I bought it in Oct. of 2005 and it is a Gateway computer GT5082. I haven't had any problems with it whatsoever, so I consider myself lucky. I have a lot of stuff on this computer as I save a lot of articles. I have used approximately 14% of space on the hard drive. I weekly do defragmentation of the hard drive. I use CC to clean up files. I use Bell Canada as the ISP and they have their own programs for viruses, spyware etc. Maybe I am jumping the gun thinking I need other programs to keep this computer in top shape. At least this is the message I am getting from your reply. What do you think I should do after reading this message? Do you think I should us Tweak UI for Win XP and forget about the other two programs? Tweak UI for XP sounds like a program I would like and use. I love to change the look of things on the computer, as I get bored very quickly with the same old stuff.
Thanks again Mark and I am anxiously waiting for your reply.

From what you say and describe I reckon you don't need to do much else.

That TweakUI for XP is a really interesting little application utility. Like I said, it doesn't 'tweak' for performance, but it does tweak for 'user convenience' and so on. It is part of Microsoft's PowerToys for XP, and you can find it here;
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows/downloads/windows-xp

Look under "Featured downloads" for TweakUI.

But other than that, just continue what you are doing. It must be good!

I have an XP system, not used so much as I now have Win 7, but it still works great. I used to be tempted to 'try things out' because I was convinced that I could make it better, faster, leaner. But the truth is, it wasn't broken so why mess with it? I learnt that a while ago.

I would mention one thing. You didn't mention it yourself but I assume you are doing it. Backups!

We have a saying here in these forums, Backup, Backup, Backup. That is not just repeating my self twice, I mean back up those important personal files 3 times.

No backup means if anything happens to the original file, eg a hard drive failure, then it is gone. With one backup, if the original file is lost, then you no longer have a backup. It has now become the original. So, at least two backups but 3 for safe measure.

Mark

Thanks again for your response to my question. I have to admit that I don't do backups. I used to, when I had Windows Live One Care which I bought and I did backups from that program and it was so easy. Why did Microsoft ever stop this program? I know I should do backups, but I tried the Windows backup and was totally confused. Would you kindly help me out here and tell me which backup program I should use. I really do know how important backups are.
Thanks so much for your trouble.

Hi again.

There are plenty of backup utility software titles available, but perhaps you don't need any at all!

There are two types of backup. A whole system backup or a backup of just important personal files. If you want to consider whole system backups then many here recommend Acronis True Image. It is said to be very good, but I can't say as I haven't used it in years.

Another title is Clonezilla. But this is not for the faint-hearted as it is not very user friendly.

But I don't do that. I simply copy my personal files, eg documents, photos, music, family videos, details of passwords and settings, (eg email settings), and anything else I want to copy, to an external hard dive. I then make further copies to other, different, eternal hard drives.

That is all I need to do. But it does mean that, if my existing hard drive fails, the one with Windows on it, or if the OS fails, then I have to fall back on my plan for reinstalling Windows. Having a plan is important because that way, the difficult and tedious job of reinstalling Windows is made that little bit easier.

I hope that helps.

Mark

Thank you so much for all of your help Mark, I really appreciate it. I am not sure how I will copy the files, etc. to an external hard drive, but I have to tell you that I have 2 of them. One if 500 GB and the other one is 100 GB. So I will do my best and keep it up because I wouldn't want to start all over and reinstall everything.

Have a great day. It is now 2:55 p.m. here in Ontario.

I can copy what I want with Explorer. Done. Nice clean backup. No issues with restore!

But then I have used DROPBOX and SyncBack and GoodSync as well.

Again, no proprietary backup file encoding headaches. Just copy the files back and I'm back in biz.
Bob

Thank you so much for your answer. So do I just go to Explorer, right click on a file I want to copy and send it to the external drive? Is it really that easy? I don't know why I have never tried it before now.
Thx.

Since that sends it to the top folder on that drive you may want that or you could want it in another folder. But that works.
Bob

What other way is there for me to do the backups Mr. Proffitt. How do you do yours? I am so sorry, but I just don't understand how to do the backups.
Thanks

For a slightly advanced 2 step you could select what you want and copy them (Control+C) then navigate to some folder on the other drive and paste them there (Control+V).

Here I've also been known to send to a compressed folder and then send that to the external for some extra speed. I'll rename the .zip to something like BackupSept14-2011.zip.

There is no one way to do backups. We do this so we can get our stuff back. Simple seems to win over backup apps.
Bob