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Author Topic: Help Keep Windows Squeaky Clean  (Read 4157 times)

Offline Tåndêm

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Help Keep Windows Squeaky Clean
« on: December 11, 2008, 03:42:25 PM »
I recently picked up a book called "PC Annoyances", and it's got some good stuff in it. I'm bringing a couple tricks out of it to help you keep Windows all clean and organized.

[ Disk Cleanup - Your HD can get cluttered. ]
I'm sure you all know what Disk Cleanup does. But here's a lil' trick to speed it up. Open your "Run" dialog (Start > Run, or <WIN> + <R> [<WIN> is that button with the Windows flag on it]) and type cleanmgr /sageset:1 into that box. You'll get what looks like the usual Disk Cleanup window (sans progress bar), and you can check what you usually clean up (or check 'em all!). Then, right click on your desktop and hit New > Shortcut. Type cleanmgr /sagerun:1 into that (note the /sagerun:1 is different from the /sageset:1). Name your shortcut something like "Clean the HD" or whatever. Heck, if you want, you can make it a Scheduled Task and have it run at like 3 AM when you aren't on the computer! It won't work if it's off though.

[ Keep Your Taskbar Tidy ]
This one involves messing with the registry. Not for the faint of heart.

First, download RegEditX so you can get to the proper location in your registry without fighting with that blasted tree. Then, run it, and in the box on top there, paste this in: My Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced\

Right click a blank spot and hit New > DWORD Value. It's name must be TaskbarGroupSize. Set it's value to 2, and reboot. Now, when you have a program with more than one window open, it'll group em all up by program (even if the taskbar's nowhere near full!).
Congratulations!
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