2. I'd remove it. You can always reinstall Acrobat 6 if it starts acting up.

3. You might need to ask your ISP if their email has any dependency on those programs.

4. Yes.

Finally, in regards to freeing up space, what browser are you using? You may be able to recover significant space simply by deleting cached Internet files and lowering the size of that cache.

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Edited by - Renee on 3/10/2005 11:15:03 PM

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3. I would not advise it.

4. You can, but by leaving Turbotax 2003 you can, I believe, start a new file in Turbotax 2004 by using your previous year's sofeware. This reduces your time in filling your tax returns.

Edited by - squirtfan1 on 3/10/2005 11:35:18 PM

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As to 4., depending on the complexity of your 2003 return, it may be better to install 2004 before uninstalling 2003's software. Installing 2004 includes a function to transfer your 2003 return information to 2004, especially if you have any loss carryforwards.

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One thing that you might want to do prior to uninstalling TT 2003 is to save your 2003 returns as PDF's. If you ever need to reprint your 2003 return, you would need to reinstall TT 2003. If you save them as PDF's, you can just reprint them using Adobe Acrobat.

"Save as PDF" should be an option in the "File" menu (that's where it is in the 2004 version).

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the less on your computer and the fewest running processes the better for performance and safety online and you'd be suprised at how efficient it is without bloat, which you can start eliminating while you're installing windows by never installing stuff like QoS, the farsi language-pack and file-sharing if you don't use them. you can reinstall the tax program from disc, if you've got office you should have the disc too. if it came with works or some other cheapie office suite, openoffice.org is better than anything short of the real deal.for the internet- grab acrobat, firefox and thunderbird and spybot freezonealarm, kerio or sygate for a firewall, you probably have an antivirus on the backup disc but avg works. you can de-brand and consolidate AIM, yahoo, msn, irc by using gaim. if you need to burn stuff you can do that with burnatonce or cdburnerxp and rip stuff with cdex or eac and listen to music with foobar or winamp. media player classic and xvid and ffdshow as codecs lets you watch dvds or any video file you download.

that's around 8-10 programs on your computer for word-processing and pdfs, your taxes, a safe client for email, spreadsheets, instant-messaging, browing the web, antivirus and firewall, burning to media, listening to and ripping music, watching dvds or divx movies. very few people do all of that, let alone more. that's going to be just as functional, much safer, and considerably faster than the stuff dell preinstalled that computers always claim to be worth hundreds of dollars. all of it's free and all of it's as good as and in many cases superior to the commercial equivalent and shouldn't take more than part of an afternoon as an overhaul. if you consider doint that and have the discs, i'll be more than happy to collect the hyperlinks to everything listed if that's helpful.

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buying a second hard drive isn't a bad option either, you can get a good drive for less then $100. probably a lot less in the US with sales.

folders to look for:
c:\windows\temp
c:\temp

in XP and 2000:
c:\documents and settings\<your name here>\local settings\temp

Decrease the size of your internet cache (40MB) and recycle bin (1GB)

lesson to be learned: Burn your porn to backup CDs.

Edited by - oatmeal on 3/11/2005 11:50:27 AM

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I've got two more questions. Do I need to have something called "my network places" loaded on the computer? I'm not hooked up to any network, this is my home computer that I'm using.

There is also something called Camio Viewer 2000, that appears as a small icon on my lower right toolbar? What does this do, and can I get rid of it?

Another question - When I check the performance of my computer by right clicking on the computer icon, and going to "properties", it says I have 127 MB RAM, and usually 75-85% system resources. It also says that the file system is 32 bit, Virtual memory is 32 bit, and that disk compression is not installed. At the bottom of that window it says that "your system is configured for optimal performance".

Is there anything that I can do to free up some RAM? I know I can go out and get more memory chips, but I'd like to see what I can do now.

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As far as "My Network Places" goes, that's part of the operating system and I don't think you can, or should, remove it.

Regarding freeing up memory, is memory a problem? The way to free up memory is to load less into it, which means clean up your registry and stop un-needed processes and programs from loading.

Edited by - hardware on 3/11/2005 10:53:13 PM

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To get rid of it click start, run and type msconfig. click on the startup tab.
there should be a program listed there that you can uncheck. It shouldn't be running after your next restart.
note: handle msconfig with care. make note of your settings in case a hardware device (printer, mp3 player, scanner, web cam) stops working.

2. scandisk and defragment your hard drive. then repeat the first step.

3. download and run Spybot to make sure you don't have any spyware hogging resources.

4. update your virus definitions and do a virus scan just in case.

Ok, now we can try to free up ram
1. go in to programs like real player, quicktime, msn messenger and disable tray icon applications or options that are supposed to make your internet experience faster. They just eat up memory. (same with programs in your startup folder). auto update features are big on this, same with "instant on" options.

2. use msconfig to see how many startup programs you can get rid of. More programs running, less memory for the rest of windows. (note, you can do this in spybot as well using the advanced mode and click on tools. handle with care)

3. (this may be too advanced) look at what programs are running by opening up the task manager (ctrl alt del in XP). That will give you a sortable list of programs loaded and how much memory and CPU they're using. If you want to go through and find out about any resource hogs you can find their name and go to answers that work's task list

If you really want a boost the cheapest upgrade you can make is Ram. going up to 256 or 512MB should be noticable. Increasing disk space and defragmenting should help too.
(run scandisk and a defrag too, look for scandisk error files in the root of c:\. I can't remember what their naming convention was, anyone remember?)

After that I'd suggest looking at a new system. You can get cheap pentium 4 machines from Dell with good warranties. The fastest machines are based on AMD processors. Avoid Intel Celeron and AMD Sempron processors.

Sorry, I'm running out of steam. good luck and if you think you're doing something wrong, stop and wait for help. :-)

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ctfmon .exe
ScanRegistry
Task monitor
System tray
Load power profile
Quicktime task
Motivemonitor
MadExe
TkBellExe
Microsoft Office startup
Resolution Assistant
Camio Viewer
Adobe Gamma Loader .exe
NKvMon .exe

I do have a Nikon digital camera, but it came with Nikon view for handling and transferring pictures. I don't remember if I had Camio Viewer before this.

I will do the scandisk and defragmentation again. I did these about six months ago, but that was before I got my new Canon printer-all-in-one, which seems to use up some of the RAM.

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In the link you found for me to read, about deleting files safely, what does 'EDIT&gt' mean? I don't understand the &gt part.

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It's just the HTML code for the 'greater than' symbol.
It should read 'EDIT>'.

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network places is fine, you just should make sure you timeout and don't see any icons in workgroup computers if you aren't networked to other computers in your house.

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