Cleaning Your Computer Desktop
Is your computer slow to boot up? Does it take forever for the desktop to load? You could have a seriously cluttered desktop. Fortunately, simply by putting everything on your desktop in a folder, or several folders, you can remove that confusing clutter and speed up your PC. Or, if you want to keep everything on your desktop, why not do a bit of organising? Follow these simple steps to speed up your computer and clear the clutter.
By Kay Brenner
Ah, the computer desktop. It’s just as important to keep this desktop clean as it is to keep your real desktop clutter free, so that you may work at optimal levels. It will help your computer speed up as well. Having to render all those icons on the desktop all the time can really slow things down.
Why Not Remove Them All?
You can simply remove all the icons from your desktop. Create a new folder in
the middle of the desktop then drag and drop everything on the desktop into
it. This is the crude way to remove everything, because technically it’s
still all on your desktop but it’s just not visible. Or you can simply
do this with the main desktop items you use all of the time. If all of them
are in one folder together it will mean that you have to double click one more
time, but it will also clear up that desktop and speed your computer up slightly.
Keep Them but Organise Them
If you simply can’t live without some items on your desktop then there
are several tools to help you organise all of them. You can access all of the
options by right clicking on the desktop. If you go to the View menu you can
choose between different sizes of icons. If you put them on large it might help
you realise how cluttered or clean your desktop is. From the View menu you can
also align your icons to a grid, or have Windows “auto arrange”
your icons. If you do have them set to auto arrange, you can then sort them
by their name, the size of the files, as well as several others.
Really, I believe that the best way to go is to just make one folder and throw all of that junk that’s been piling up on your desktop straight into it. Just imagine your real desktop with just one folder containing your family photos and memorabilia instead of it all taking up space and collecting dust!
Improving Performance
Just by following these simple steps, you can improve the performance of your
PC, especially when loading demanding applications such as games or word processors.
If you have a large number of files you could create various directories such
as “pictures”, “music” or “video”, for example.
I would even suggest creating a scrapbook folder for files you are not sure
about how to classify.
Kay Brenner is a PC consultant who specialises in restoring slow PCs. To reclaim the dream machine you first bought and download a free PC health check, visit www.pcdocpro.com.
