The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #88702 Message #1665906
Posted By: Steve in Sidmouth
10-Feb-06 - 07:42 AM
Thread Name: Tech: windows registry - how to clean it up
Subject: Tech: windows registry - how to clean it up
Technical Two questions.
On every Windows PC I have used, including this one originally, the START button is in the bottom left of the screen and the clock and collection of icons for 'running' programs is in the bottom right. You get them to appear by moving the mouse pointer down to the bottom of the screen. However, some time ago, I pressed some combination of keys or dropped the mouse, and looked up to see the horizontal 'bar' of information fly upwards to take up a new 'vertical' position at the left side of the screen. So now the START button is in the top left corner. The clock and collection of icons is in the bottom left, where the START button used to be. To get them all to appear you move the mouse over to the extreme left of the screen, not to the bottom of the screen. So, what did I do, and how do I get it back to normal if I ever wish to do so?
Next question:
I have an old hard drive running W98(first ed) which must have had hundreds of programs added and deleted (maybe not properly) and I think the Registry is severely cluttered. The machine takes a long time to boot up and settle down and the 2.5 GB hard drive works furiously during this initial period. The disc is half full (1200 MB free) The disc has also been moved around various machines in its time. I know enough to get into the Registry (regedit.exe) and see folders for programs that I can do without, but what is the best way of deleting unwanted entries - screwing up the Registry is not something that I wish to do. Is there a well written idiots guide to how this obscure part of Windows actually works??
If I go into the Registry and HKEY-LOCAL-MACHINE and SOFTWARE there is a list of programs folders many of which are no longer installed programs - including Norton Antivirus. I suspect the machine is starting up a lot of programs I don't need.
Under system information\ Software environment \ start-up programs\ you can view the programs that are started automatically. These include: