End of the Year Computer Clean-Up

Here’s a list of things that you should do before you leave this school year so that you will have everything where you need it when you return.

• Open My Documents on your computer and delete anything that you don’t need to keep.
• Any files that are in My Documents that you want to save for next year need to also be saved elsewhere for safety’s sake.  Each of your schools should have a spot on the server where you can save items.  See your STC or contact me if you need help.
• Space on the server may be limited, so if you are saving things, make sure that they are things you really want to keep.  If you’ve been using your user folder all year, you need to take this time to clean it out as well and get rid of anything that you don’t need. 
• Of course, you can also save things on floppy disks, but remember these can come out of the box faulty or go bad at any time for no reason, so if it’s really important and you are saving to a floppy you need to save it somewhere else, too.
• Clean out your email inbox. 
• Also in email you will need to go through the Sent Items and delete all the old messages you’ve sent that you don’t need a copy of.  (**You can quickly select adjacent items by clicking on the first item, holding the shift key down and then clicking on the last item.  Or to select non-adjacent items hold the Ctrl key down while you click on the items you want.  Then you can delete everything that is highlighted at once.)
• Also check to be sure that your Deleted folder in your email isn’t overloaded.
• If you have lots of email you want to keep, you may need to set up Personal Folders to store these somewhere other than your inbox.  For directions on how to do that, you can see my tips web pages http://teach.fcps.net/trt2/Documents/tech_tip_14.htm
• I would also delete temporary files and temporary Internet files (right click on your IE icon, choose properties, then you should see a button to delete files). 
• Run scan disk.  To do this choose START ->  PROGRAMS -> ACCESSORIES -> SYSTEM TOOLS -> SCAN DISK.
• Run disk defragmenter.  These will just help your computer run more efficiently when you come back next year.  To do this choose START ->  PROGRAMS -> ACCESSORIES -> SYSTEM TOOLS -> DISK DEFRAGMENTER.
• You can also back up your computer using about 4 or 5 disks.  To do this choose START ->  PROGRAMS -> ACCESSORIES -> SYSTEM TOOLS -> BACKUP.