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Enchanted Trinkets Complete--a hardcover book containing over 500 magic items for your D&D games!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Truth Seeker" data-source="post: 1779377" data-attributes="member: 11804">With what is put here, I hope that will enlighten those who are not fully knowledgeable in the infrastructure of the Home PC. And oh, this is not pure gospel, just aids. [[Inspired by Ranger Wickett<img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /> ]] The first thing that has to be said, the PC is like a car, drive it, gas it, and it will take you places, but to get there, you have to take care of it along the way. We start with the most important need of a PC, maintenance, if you drive this PC everyday like crazy (you know who you here<img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /> ), here then is a little tale, the files that are used to start your system are pulled from a section of your hard drive, used, and when you shut the down the system, those start files are not put back in the same place, hence, the term fragmentation. The Files will be scattered over the hard drive by this process in the long run. If your PC runs like 24/7, then you will need to defrag your HD, every other day.  A so-so user, then once a week or two. But a word of caution, don't ever let the fragmentation count go into double digits, don't even let it hit 10%, the greater the number, the harder the system will have to look for the files that start the system, applications you use, and some weird things might start to happen also. Yes folks, this will slow your system in many small ways. It is highly recommended, that you have two hard drives, the second one for your more important stuff. I must apologize to those who are using the older verisons of Windows, this outline is for XP, and there are several features within the OS, that help can you see the functions and health of your system. In the Control Panel, there is a Icon called, Adminstrative Tools, these tools will show you the heart and soul of your Windows. When you open it, there should be seven or so icon tools there. The two most important ones are, Computer Managment and Services, let deal with CM first. Under CM, you will see three tools, System Tools, Storage, and Services and Applications, where you need to go, is to Storage, and once open, you will see three more branches, Removable Storage(that deals with CDR-rom players and the like) Disk Fragmenter and Disk Management, deals with repairs and health monitoring of your HD(s). DF, this puppy will has the feature to analyze the current state of your HD, it will check for how much fragmentation has occured, and it will let you know, if you need to defrag your drive immediately. But there is small catch, for a successful defrag to happen, the system does require a good amount of free space on your hard drive to move files around, around 15% of free space (but some others will state, it does not need that, well, the lower the space, the longer the defrag will take). But the DF has gone through some small changes from its' heyday from Windows 95, and honestly, it is gotten better with age. If you don't have a third party app. using for your clean up...this is the one to use. DM...is another great tool, you can see the health of your drive, and you can reformat your drive(s) create partitions (dividing a big drive into multiple slots), as long it is not the main drive, that has your OS(Operational System) and you can even change the File Format, From Fat 32 to NTFS(don't worrry you head if you are cool with what you have already) These two great tools are wonderful for those who are well verse on HD knowledge, greenies...take your time in learning...you don't want to be making a mistake that you can't reverse. Okay...time to leave to this area and go somewhere that a lot of people don't know or deal with right away. Temporary Internet Files (located in Control Panel via Internet Options or under Tools on your Internet Explorer)...this area stores your cookies of sites you surf, while along going through the internet, and this is one of the default made by MS...if you look, you will see a storage number setting of 100+ to 300+mbs in number to store where you surf. You don't need it.  That is a wasted space in general, and it has proven from sources like PC World magazine, Smart Computing (I collect these like crazy for info, back then) that what is needed, is only a 80mb setting, thats' right...only 80mb...and to this day, MS has never set that number on the TIF, it has been a proven fact with the reduced number, that all you need. You just gain some more space. Hmmm that trunk is looking pretty spacey...<img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />  And now, to a favorite subject of mine, that to this day, still perplex some people...Virtual Memory VM, is a feature that you cannot see or touch physically...it is all located on your Hard drive, this 'extra memory' is reserved space, section off by XP, to act as a Memory buffer(might be using the wrong term here) in case your onboard memory (RAM) is all used up for some reason, and this fallback act like 'RAM' in transferring whatever functions are going on with your PC, until the main RAM is release from whatever is holding it up, example...loading a game, like FF XI, a 6gig hog, that will probably will suck up your onboard memory to load the game as quickly as possible. When that happens, that is where VM kicks in, your OS operations are temporary transferred to here, and everything will work to a much slower pace, yes VM is not as fast as Onboard RAM, and there is nothing in the world that will make it go faster(that I know of), okay, this is VM does for you, keep the OS running, with sometimes, slight hiccups, but it will be okay, when the loading period is finish. This has a bad side to it too...it is the biggest crook on space stealing on your hard drive, once again, MS lets it run at default big time, here...I will requote myself from a previous thread, that Ranger Wickett had a problem with his system. You now have control on its use and more room gained, when you custom control these features.  Coming later....free softwares that can help you manage your system...yes, I did say free... Okay, I will pause here and resume the rest later. And oh, I do request to the Mods that this should become a stickie... More to come later.<img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f60e.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":cool:" title="Cool    :cool:"  data-smilie="6"data-shortname=":cool:" /></blockquote>

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