Hello Everyone,

Welcome to my blog on making your computing life easier. I have been dealing with and working on Computers for close to 32 years now and the one thing I have learned and noticed when working on someones system is the amount of clutter they have on their desktop. Some of this is caused by pre-determined installation and setup features provide by the computer manufacturer. but many can show up when you surf or if you accidentally save a file thinking it was going to the My Documents folder when in actuality it was save to your desktop. To combat some of this on my own system I have established folders for various items so when you look at my desktop it is relatively clutter free. You can right click in the wallpaper of the desktop and go to new folder and name the file anything but typically I will use something like desktop 2 or if it is a tool I use I might name it Doug's Utilities or just Utilities, then I drag and drop the corresponding clutter into the respective folder. If it is an Icon I do not wish to keep I simply drag it to my recycle bin and continue on to other icons. I have several users of my own system and we share a login so even though I try to maintain some resemblance of order my family has a tendency to ignore many of the items I consider clutter and then once a month I will clean up the desktop and remove any unwanted Icons and programs.

Lets look into why computers act up and slow down over a period of time.

When working with a Windows based PC -regardless of version--you need to maintain things like the registry, temp files, cookies, etc because lack of maintenance in these areas can be affected by ad-ware that is attached to browser based settings that can be memory hogging information forwarders. These typically are on most legitimate sites and many not so legitimate sites because marketers and undesirables want to try to feed you advertising based on where you surf--what your preferences are. after a matter of time these little cookies crumble inside your hard drive and consume valuable resources from the processor and memory by causing slowdowns and bottlenecks that come to you as a slowdown or less efficient computer system. I have used several freely distributed products and I have one that I payed for on each of my computer systems at my home office. I like Malwarebytes and Adaware both applications can be used for a trial period to see how effective they can be for you but I recommend paying the software fee for these because they do a much better job than the add ons that the established commercial security software companies would like you to buy. If you have any questions concerning my blog post please feel free to contact me at drgempel@insightbb.com. Thanks Doug Gempel