This article is for folks who are somewhat computer savvy but who don’t always know the best way to keep their computer running tip-top. I believe I have found a good system for keeping my personal computer Nice, Efficient and Tidy (NEaT). I share my information here in the hope of helping a few folks.

And also so that I have my little system written down to give to my friends when they ask me for the zillionth time to tidy up their box. (“Box” is what some sales guys and fixit gals call computers. Learned that from talking to an awful lot of them!).

 

When I started writing this all down I had wanted to categorize the steps of my system under the adjectives that make up my acronym. For example “run defrag twice” would be categorized as Efficient. “Take the time to ditch icons you don’t use,” would be under Neat. Or should that be Tidy? Well, categorizing won’t help much anyway because many of these steps have to be done in a particular order so as to achieve maximum effectiveness. So, follow the steps in order unless otherwise noted. Any single step could be disregarded unless otherwise noted. But, if you start a step, finish it. I’m going to assume folks reading this will know how to get around windows pretty well. Like a recipe, read the step through at least once before tackling it. Also, don’t run other programs while you are going through these steps. That could slow things down or screw things up.
By the way, my little system does not work for Macs. Nor does it work well for pre-Windows ’98. It works especially well for Windows 2000 and XP (home or pro).

OK, let’s go. Here are my steps to a NEaT computer:

1. Ditch any programs you know you will never, ever use.
Ditching programs is good because it saves hard drive space on the box. I personally can’t bear wasted space.

a. Get into Control Panel then get into the folder “Add/Remove Programs.”
b. Take a careful look at the list of programs you can change or remove. Do you see anything that you know for a fact is absolutely not a program you want? I, for example, know that I will never again play a certain computer game that I installed for my little niece when she was 4. (She won’t play it either, she is so over it now.) Remove the program.
c. If your computer tells you that it can’t delete something because it is missing something or what have you, don’t sweat it. Just leave it be. Remove obvious programs that are trouble free to remove. If you have a massive problem removing something just leave it and don’t try to remove it again.
d. For goodness sake don’t remove anything important. If in doubt, leave it.
e. Reboot your computer every time you finish removing a program. This will help keep the computer unconfused.
f. You will probably have to delete icons from your start menu and desktop that relate to the deleted program.
g. Don’t worry if you get a message that the system could not remove all elements of the program and you might have to remove them manually. It’s probably the icons.