Is your copy of XP running slow? Then you will be very interested in these easy steps to speed it up.

When you boot your computer, it loads the current profile. Its this profile, and what it contains, that loads into RAM on boot. Depending on the specifications of your system, this could choke RAM to the point of uselessness.

Right click on the MY COMPUTER icon and select PROPERTIES- ADVANCED. Then click on the SETTINGS button in the USER PROFILES section.

This window lists the profiles currently being used in your system. Look for the one with your name or the one that you use the most. Then check out the size. It should be anywhere from a few MB up to 4 or 500 MB (megabytes). If its in the GB (gigabytes) then this is definitely contributing to your system’s slowness.

OK, make a quick note off the size of your profile and then close the window.

In MY COMPUTER go to C:\ drive and create a new folder called USERS. Then inside the USERS folder create a folder using your profile or logon name, then inside that folder create the following folders:

• MY PICTURES
• MY DOCUMENTS, and
• OUTLOOK

PART 1 - OUTLOOK

Do you use Outlook? If so, follow these instructions, if not, you can skip to the next part in this mini-help series – MY DOCUMENTS.

Outlook keeps its email files in a file called outlook.pst. This file is loaded when your computer profile is loaded and can add greatly to the RAM choke. It can also get BIG, and its a good idea to use the automatic archive program to keep it lean.

If you use Outlook and have already configured the automatic archive program, then we can proceed to the MOVE YOUR ARCHIVE.PST FILE section, if not then what we’re going to do here is create one.

Go to TOOLS – OPTIONS – OTHER – AUTO ARCHIVE, or use your menu’s to get to the ARCHIVE section in your version.

• Tick the RUN AUTOARCHIVE EVERY box and choose to run every 14 days. I like to keep my systems lean at work, and have set the Archive program to run every 14 days. You can change this to suit yourself. Any longer and your main outlook.pst file grows!.
• UNTick the PROMPT BEFORE AUTOARCHIVE RUNS box. Otherwise it always seems to get ignored or NO is clicked because the user is too busy and it would never get done!.
• Tick the DELETE EXPIRED ITEMS box. Don’t worry, unless you marked items to expire after a certain time, this wont affect your archived emails.
• Tick the ARCHIVE OR DELETE OLD ITEMS
• Tick the SHOW ARCHIVE FOLDER IN FOLDER LIST. This is so, if you needed to access an older email, you can simply click on it in your Outlook program in the Archive Folders in the menu list under Personal Folders on the left.
• Clean out items older than 2 months. You can always change this at a later date, but remember, the longer you keep your files the bigger your outlook.pst file will be. Archiving simply moves your files out of your outlook.pst file into the exact same location in the ARCHIVE FOLDER .pst file. This will allow your Outlook to run so much quicker.
• Move old items to: – this is the location you just created above. It should be: C:\Users\YOURNAME\Outlook\archive.pst. You can browse to the location, or just type it in the box provided
• UNTick permanently delete old items
• Click on APPLY THESE SETTINGS TO ALL FOLDERS NOW
• and then Click on OK

All right so far, now we have to run the archive program to clean out old files from your Outlook Personal Folders. In Outlook, select FILE – ARCHIVE. In the window that appears, click on ARCHIVE ALL FOLDERS ACCORDING TO THEIR AUTOARCHIVE SETTINGS. Then click OK. It might take from a few minutes to a lot longer to run this for the first time. After it has run for the first time it normally only takes a few seconds to a couple of minutes each 14 days to do an archive.

Once the archiving has completed you should see the ARCHIVE FOLDERS in your menu list on the left. Any files older than 2 months will now appear in the same order in this folder as they did in your Personal Folder.

MOVE YOUR ARCHIVE.PST FILE

Ok, so if you have skipped to this section, then we can assume you already have an archiving habit, great!. Now we simply need to cut and paste your archive.pst folder to the location we created above, to get it out of your current profile and free up some memory [RAM].

Open Outlook. On the left you should be able to see your folders. Inbox, Deleted Items, Sent items etc. It should also contain a folder called ARCHIVE FOLDERS. Right click on this and select CLOSE ARCHIVE FOLDERS. It should dissappear from your menu list under Personal Folders.

Select FILE – DATA FILE MANAGEMENT and then the DATA FILES tab. This should show you at least two files. One will be your main Outlook Personal Folders .pst file, and the Archive Folders file location. Make note of this location. Normally it would be something like this:

C:\Documents and Settings\YOURNAME\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook

Close Outlook. In MY COMPUTER or Microsoft Explorer go to the file location above. In there will be Outlook.pst, and archive.pst. If there are more, simply organise the folder by clicking on the DATE MODIFIED heading once or twice to show the most recent files at the top.Right click on archive.pst and select CUT. Then go to the file location we created earlier – OUTLOOK [C:\Users\YOURNAME\Outlook] and paste the file in there.

Close out of those windows and open Outlook again. Select FILE – DATA FILE MANAGEMENT and ADD. Use the default settings and browse to the location where you pasted the archive.pst folder and select it. Follow the default prompts and it should add the new location to your Outlook data files and locations screen.

In the Personal Folders menu on the left the Archive Folders should appear.

Now go to TOOLS – OPTIONS – OTHER – AUTO ARCHIVE and check that the MOVE OLD ITEMS TO: section reflects the new location. If not, simply use the BROWSE button to get to the file you just pasted. Click on APPLY THESE SETTINGS TO ALL FOLDERS NOW and exit the window.

Almost straight away, you should notice a bit of a quicker response from your system in opening and closing programs. Depending on RAM choke, this could require a restart for you to notice.

In the next part of this mini-help series, we’ll move your MY DOCUMENTS folder out of your profile and into the C:\ drive folder created earlier freeing up even more RAM when your profile loads.

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Cheers for now