I am going to get a whole house surge protector. But should I also invest in getting "good" surge protectors for my electronics (tv and related peripherals, computer and peripherals?). If so, could someone point me toward a good one. I wouldn't know what makes a surge protector good (and think just getting expensive is not the way to make the selection). I do have surge protectors in all those areas, but don't think we selected them with any real knowledge. Thank you. Lynn. PS - and my efforts to copy are delayed - bc. I can't find the replacement drive. We received so many packages last week - and during the power outage - so I was opening and putting things away by flashlight - and so far, I can't find it. have this scary feeling that my husband or cleaning woman thought the box was trash and tossed it out. Hope not.

If you install xmarks on the browser and set it up to save your bookmarks then you can go to the second computer install xmarks on it and have it sync it will automatically put everything you had on the first onto the second plus it keeps them all on a safe website that you have access to from any computer any where, you just need your name and password. I use it on all of mine. Just be sure to get the version for your browser. Xmarks. Com Usually to copy the files to flash drive you can right click on the file name and choose copy to then select the usb flash drive, you want to copy not move or cut, that will leave them on the original drive should you need them there again. If you want to copy an entire folder just right click on the folder and choose to copy it to the usb flash drive. Be absolutely sure to use the safety remove icon before removing the flash drive, it will appear down by the clock when the flash drive is inserted into the pc. Always do this.

Bob - Good Grief is right. But it's probably not as bad as it sounds. One of the problems is that before I found this forum a year ago (and had some sense of saving files to the appropriate place), not only did my husband and I just save files (with no regard to where they were being placed) - we also had 2 different computer guys help at various times - and I've discovered that one of them took it upon himself to set up some folders and put items there (he set up a Lynn's documents) when he transferred data from one computer to another. Now I can see why he set up my own folder (since my husband and I shared a computer in those days) - but he never told me he was doing that- so lo and behold - I have an entire Lynn's documents folder that I never use but contains some of my older files. yeah - I guess it's a lot to sort. Personally, your method makes sense to me - just set up folders in the C drive for the categories I'm interested in. I'm now the only one on my computer - so I don't think I need a "my documents" folder (and certainly not a separate "Lynn's documents" folder). I am so glad to have found this forum and decided to get mastery and comprehension of my computer. Having professionals set things up - but not bother telling you what and why they did things - just complicates everything. And the pictures are also a mess bc. this helpful computer guy put picasa on my pc - which grabbed every picture - so that many pictures appear in picasa and elsewhere. It's the picture finding and organizing that seems the most daunting. Videos and music I've done myself in the past year - no one else has touched it but me. Word files are manageable too. BP - my question about the Tivo files is that I want to sit in my living room, have Tivo search my computer to see what's on it. That's what I'm thinking has to be in the Tivo desktop program. When I'm at my computer, I think I can find the videos anywhere - I'm just thinking that no matter where they came from (Tivo desktop, hulu, my camcorder, edited in Videoredo), that I might somehow have to move them all to My Tivo Recordings folder in order to access it using the Tivo and watching tv. Do I have that right? Jemdandy - that's one interesting way to approach the 2 drives - one for programs and one for data files. But then I'd be backing up data files to yet another place. I have a 500GB hard drive and am thinking of adding a second 1TB hard drive. So both drives have lots of room. Except for video files, I would think my c drive could easily handle my programs and data files (music, documents and pictures) - and the software and those files could be on the c drive and backed up to the second internal drive. Is there a reason - in terms of improved performance, etc - to use the c drive only for software? Does that add an extra step if I want to use one of my software programs (say photo editing) and have to go to the other drive to get the actual photos to work on? Or is it just as quick to run a program on one drive and get the data from the other? [Okay - good grief, it is]. Thanks everyone. Lynn.

Most of the checkboxes there are for things that actually don't take up much room, and don't make much difference either way. These take up room and are worth deleting : Temporary Internet files Temp files (especially) Recycle bin (especially) The rest you can think of as historical traces of things you've done. If you're a privacy nut you might want to keep them checked for deletion. Otherwise, it really doesn't make much difference. For example : Run (in Start menu) Clipboard "Run" would be things you've typed into the Run box. If you deleted them, then the next time you use the Run box they won't predicatively autofill. If you're not a power user that won't make any difference to you. Clipboard - kind of the same thing. I have a clipboard add-on that saves the last 20 things I copied & pasted. Deleting that list would clear those 20 things, and i wouldn't be able to paste them again. Memory dumps & Chkdsk file fragments are, for the former, leftovers from crashes that can help diagnose those crashes, and for the latter, just file fragments of corrupted files also probably from some kind of crash. You pretty much never need them. Basically the only things you really should think of clearing out are the Temporary Internet files (the Internet Explorer cache), Recycle bin,, and temp files, all of which take up space. Those are the only things i check for deletion. You can leave Windows Error Reporting and Event files - they might help to diagnose a problem if it should come up. Everything else, it doesn't really matter either way. None of them remove actually programs or anything of the like. Good luck, Kent