Newsletter Archives

February, 2006

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PC Tips & Tricks #2
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It's hard to believe the first month of 2006 is over. Last month, we explained how to start your PC's new year off right by doing a bit of basic maintenance that was most likely overdue. This month, we're going to explain how to automate those tasks so you don't have to remember to do them yourself.

But first, we'd like to announce that Media Investigtor 2.0 has just been released. The major changes in the latest version are:

* An improved recovery algorithm making Media Investigator's full scan over 4x's faster!
* Significant reduction in memory usage.
* Bug Fix - CRW files now recoverable!
* Several cosmetic changes. (Including but not limited to: hover hints, info text at top of screen changes based on field focus, buttons more prominent, consistent font type and colours, file types greyed out instead of invisible on entry to Setup screen.)
* Other changes can be found via the Change History page link below the download button on our web sites.

We hope you find our newsletter useful.

Now, on to helping your PC automatically tidy itself up. Although this will take some time to set-up, it is well worth it since it will save you plenty of time in the future and help your PC run efficiently.

As is often the case with Windows, you have a couple options.

1) Automating Disk Cleanup ONLY.

To get to Scheduled Tasks, click Start/All Programs/Accessories/System Tools/Scheduled Tasks.

Double click "Add Scheduled Task" to open the Scheduled Task Wizard.
Click Next and then Browse for a file called "cleanmgr.exe". In Windows XP, this is often found on your C: drive under the Windows/system32/.
Double click the cleanmgr.exe file.
Replace the "cleanmgr" description with something meaningful like "Error Scan Hard Drive".
Select how often you would like to run the scan. We'd recommend you do this task once per month.
Click Next and then set the time you would like the task to run.
Click Next. If you have a username and password set on your PC, you'll need to enter those details in order for Windows to perform this task in the background (i.e. if you have a screen saver running at the scheduled time).
Click Next and then Finish.

You have now set-up Windows to automatically clean up your hard drive.

2) Automating a Disk Cleanup and Defragmentation of your hard drive(s).

Click on Start/Run... Enter the command "cleanmgr /sageset:99" to open a Disk Cleanup Settings window. This, as the name implies, is where you set the options you want run when the Disk Cleanup Program is running.

Select the cleanup options you wish to run automatically. Although this is a personal choice, we'd recommend you select the six different temporary file types, Downloaded Program Files, Debug Dump Files, and Old Chkdsk Files. After choosing your options, click OK.

Next, you need to create what's called a batch file. To do this, open a blank text document in Notepad or Wordpad and enter the following lines:

cleanmgr /sagerun:99
defrag c:

If you have more drives you wish to automatically defragment, simply add a new defrag command on each line. (i.e. "defrag d:")

When this batch file runs, it will now run the Disk Cleanup according to the settings you chose earlier with the "cleanmgr /sageset:99" command. After cleaning up your disk, it will then defragment the drives in the order listed.

Save the batch file somewhere on your PC's hard drive with an appropriate name. We'd recommend saving it somewhere memorable like "My Documents". The file name must end with a ".bat" to let Windows know it's a batch file.

Now to automate the running of this batch program...

Go to Scheduled Tasks by clicking Start/All Programs/Accessories/System Tools/Scheduled Tasks.

Double click "Add Scheduled Task" to open the Scheduled Task Wizard.
Click Next and then Browse for your batch file. (Did you save it somewhere memorable like "My Documents"?)
Double click the batch file.
Replace the file name description with something meaningful like "Hard Drive Cleanup".
Select how often you would like to run the scan. We'd recommend you do this task once per month at least and possibly more frequently if you use your computer frequently.
Click Next and then set the time you would like the task to run.
Click Next. If you have a username and password set on your PC, you'll need to enter those details in order for Windows to perform this task in the background (i.e. if you have a screen saver running at the scheduled time).
Click Next and then Finish.

That's it! Windows will now automatically clean up and defragment your hard drive(s).

Note that your computer must be on for the scheduled tasks to run. If it not on at the time of the scheduled task, they will not run until the next time your computer is on at the scheduled time.

To read more about automating disk cleanup, read this Microsoft article - http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=315246&sd=RMVP.

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