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For Your Computers: Killer Housekeeping Housekeeping can be hazardous to your computer's health, in our recent experience. We learned the hard way that those computer utility programs that help you find and delete useless or obsolete files on your hard drive are not as smart as they think. We tried a highly touted program called "Remove-It" recently, and it dutifully located lots of files that it labeled "cybertrash," orphans of old program versions, etc. Well, we removed a bunch of these, and we got a shocking surprise: Several of our current programs lost key functions or malfunctioned altogether. Horrified, we resorted to the "fail-safe" restore function that came with the product, but were told, without explanation or appeal, that these files were not restorable. It took us weeks to gradually repair the damage as it appeared. The clear message to us: this type of utility is dangerous. Don't use them. Win95 users have built-in Microsoft utilities that will safely remove any installed Win95 version programs. Stick with that, and adopt any "orphan files" that might be left over. The alternative may be too painful. For your computers 04/18/97 To subscribe newsletter, please click here. |
