Follow these instructions to use the Weekly Cleanup folder on your desktop for Windows 95, 98, Me
(If you haven't created it yet, Click here for instructions)

1. Open the Weekly Cleanup folder on your desktop.

2. Open the first Item (1. Temp) This is a folder containing folders and files that are used by programs during certain operations. When the operation is done, the leftover files are useless.

3. Highlight and delete everything in the folder. Use Edit, Select All & Delete (or Ctrl A & delete). Close the folder.

Reopen the Weekly Cleanup folder after each step. (If you have your folder options set to "Open folders in new window", it will stay open)

4. Open the second Item (2. Temporary Internet Files)

5. Repeat #3 (This folder contains a record of Internet sites visited and can be safely deleted)

6. Open the third item (3. Internet or Internet Options). This is a dialog box and has buttons to click to Delete Temporary Internet Files and History. Do both. This appears to be a duplication of step 4 above, but sometimes deletes additional material. Be sure to check the box to delete Offline content as well. You will see this in the small window that comes up after you click Delete.

7. Open the fourth item (4. Cookies) These are small text files added to your computer by sites visited on the Internet. They may contain user names and passwords for special sites you visit. After deleting them, you may have to enter the information again when you visit the site. An example is if you have a Yahoo user name for e-mail or other features. This user name is stored in a cookie and is accessed whenever you visit Yahoo. After deleting cookies, Yahoo will ask you to log in with your user name and store it in a new cookie. For a detailed explanation of cookies, click here.

8. Select all the cookies and deselect the Index. It cannot be deleted. To deselect it, hold down the Ctrl key while you click on Index and it will remove it from the highlighted list. Then Delete the rest. Close the window. If using 95, skip step 9.

9. Open the fifth item (5. Disk Cleanup) This does not exist on 95. Click OK to cleanup the C drive. Check the boxes on items you want deleted. Click OK and then Yes. This window closes automatically when done.

10. Open the sixth item (6. Scandisk) (#5 in 95) This is a tool that can be run automatically on a scheduled basis using Windows Scheduled Tasks. If you have this set to activate automatically, turn it off. It doesn't do any harm, but this operation is more thorough by dumping the junk first.

Scandisk searches the hard drive for errors in registration between the actual files on the drive and the record of where they are. Similar to the card file in a library. If you have a card and the book is missing, you remove the card. If you have a book and no card, you remove the book.

There are settings that should be changed on first operation. Click here to see how to do this. Scroll to Fig 12 & 13.

To run Scandisk, click Start & when done, click Close twice.

11. Open the seventh item (7. Disk Defragmenter) (#6 in 95) This program scans the hard drive to reorganize it for more efficient operation. Often called Disk Optimizer. Click OK to Defrag the C drive. If it says "You don't need to run Defrag", do it anyway. Click Start. When done, It will ask if you want to quit Defrag. Answer Yes.

Close all windows. You now have a clean machine.

Notes:

If Scandisk or Defrag gives an error message that says something like "The program has restarted 10 times. Do you want to continue?", click No and look for another way to run the program. This happens because a program running in the background (like Norton AntiVirus) keeps reactivating the hard drive and making Scandisk or Defrag restart at the beginning because it detects an apparent change in the drive's contents. There are 2 methods to solve this. One is to use Ctrl, Alt, Del to shut down all running programs except Explorer. When you restart the computer, these will all return. The second method is the restart the computer in SafeMode. Click Here to learn how to do this.