When I remove a piece of hardware from a computer (such as the video card) I usually go into the System control panel and uninstall the associated driver and hardware device before physically removing the hardware. Should I follow the same procedure when doing a CPU upgrade? I am confident in uninstalling the CPU drivers but am unsure whether I should uninstall the CPU hardware device, since I am actually using it at the time. The computer is running Windows XP. (more…)

Routinely I use the Disk Cleanup wizard and Disk Defragmenter for maintenance of my computer. When running the Disk Cleanup I have noticed there is a very large amount of compressed old files on the computer. I do not want these files, so how can I delete them from the computer? (more…)

I read an item in your column a few months ago about closing processes running in the Task Manager under my user name (which is HP_administrator). However, when I go to close some of the processes a message appears saying “Terminating the process can cause undesired results”. Can I safely close these processes? (more…)

Since updating Adobe Reader 8 the following message appears whenever I start the computer “The computer must be restarted before updating can continue. Restart now?”. If I click “No” then the computer continues to function as normal, but this seems to be an unnecessary nuisance. Is there any way to get rid of this message on startup? The computer is running Windows XP Professional SP2. (more…)

Every time I start the computer a series of four messages appear saying things similar to “Windows cannot find the file C:OPTIONSCABStiryakcsrss.exe. Make sure the file exists or delete the reference to it in the registry”. Clicking OK to close each message allows the computer to continue operation. However, how can I get rid of these messages? (more…)