Solutions

Cleaning the toolbar of memory hogs

Q. After startup, I have many programs that show up on the bottom right side of my toolbar. What can I do to eliminate all but Explorer, Systray and antivirus software? I don't want more than those because they take up a lot of memory. I can do Ctrl-Alt-Del and delete each one but this is only a temporary fix. When I shutdown and reboot, they appear again.

A. This one of my pet peeves. All software applications want to put a memory resident tray icon on your task bar. For Windows XP/2000 users, this is not as much of a problem. But for Windows Me/9x users, it is one of the most common performance killers.

Double-click My Computer, then on the menu bar click Help, About. You will see the current Resource percentage. It should be above 70 percent. If not, you should look for things to eliminate from the task bar, just as you have done. The way to make these changes is through the System Information tool (Start, Programs, Accessories, System Tools, System Information, or Start, Run, type MSINFO32 and press enter). Select Tools, System Configuration Utility.

From here you can selectively turn off the different areas within Windows from which programs run at startup. You'll see a tab for each area: Config.sys, Autoexec.Bat, System.ini, Win.ini (expand the Windows option and check the Load and Run lines) and Startup (this contains the programs that start from within the Registry). The programs you disable from starting at boot time will remain listed in case you decide that you need to turn it back on at startup.

Loading a driver

Q. I have an older laptop. I would like to be able to hook my laptop to my cell phone to retrieve my e-mail when I am away from home. To do this, I bought a kit from Qualcomm that included a cable and a CD driver disc. My problem is that this laptop does not have a CD drive. Can I load the CD driver onto my desktop, then download it to my laptop through a direct cable connection? If so, could you describe how to do this?

A. Go to the Microsoft support knowledge base (support.microsoft.com) and search for: Q298446. This article describes the setup of Microsoft Lap Link. You might want to check with Qualcomm (or its Web site) to see if it has the CD driver available for download. Of course, it would be slower (assuming that the laptop has only phone modem access to the Internet; if it has a network card, then forget everything I've said and just get a cross-over patch cable to connect both machines). That might be a lot less trouble than setting up Lap Link.

Temp files trouble

Q. I get the following message that I have to say OK to: "C:\WINDOWS\TEMPORARY INTERNET FILES\CONTENT.IES\8FBJI8P9\PUP[1].HTM Infection: JS/No Close.gen [exact]" Each time I tell it OK, the next time I turn on my computer or go on the Internet it comes up again. I tried running my Command virus for the Internet files and reports no viruses found.

A. Make sure your antivirus program is up-to-date and has the latest virus definitions. Next, delete your Internet cache files. For Internet Explorer you can do this from the menu bar. Click Tools, Internet Options, General Tab. Click the Delete Files button. You'll see a dialog window asking to confirm this action. Click OK.

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