[ Ref.: "CD Player & Computer Interface & Windows 2000"
 [ in 030619 MMDigest

Jim Crank wrote:

> Give us instructions for loading a program where one can completely
> clean out a PC hard drive.

This would be far from the scope of Spencer's or Peter's work.

Fortunately such a program is already available.  It's called Norton
Utilities.  Now, I am not sure the following can be directly applied
to Windows 2000 Professional (I have Win98) but some variation will
certainly work.

1)  If the laptop has ever been used to surf the Internet, then first
go to www.lavasoft.com and download the free version of Ad-aware 6.0.
Run this program to clean out all Internet garbage, spyware, etc.

2)  I have Windows 98.  I ordered a CD from www.directdeals.com
containing one year of Norton AntiVirus and Norton Utilities 2001 for
$3.50(!).  That's right: three dollars and fifty cents.  With shipping
it still was under ten dollars.  They have other Norton packages for
similar prices under ten bucks.

You may load only the Utilities Program if you wish.  The Utilities
programs are many and comprehensive, and very easy to use.  You can
start with the easy one button scan which will scan everything, find
and fix errors in all systems, registry, storage, etc.  It also has
a very fast defragmentation program.  Programs are user friendly and
will walk you through.  You will have choices for fixes; some can be
automatic, or you may choose from a list of fixes, as appropriate.

Did you know that when you delete or even reformat, that data is
still left on the hard drive?.  You just cannot see it under normal
circumstances.  There is a utility that will rewrite all unused space
on the drive to remove all this junk.  (It just makes it all zeros.)
Now your drive is really like new!

As an added bonus, since I have been using the Utilities program,
my system has become very stable, and remains stable, even when the
computer is left running for many hours.  I may have an occasional
freeze up, when working in many programs at once, but no major crashes.

Hope this helps,

Tom Lear
San Francisco, Calif.