Make the operating system look and behave the way you want.

 

by Valerie Ryan, edited by Paul Heltzel FOR 

June 25, 1998 11:02 a.m. PT

 

Months of working with Windows 98 betas pushed us to develop these tips for getting some work done during the transition. From shutting off animated menus to viewing all your folders the same way, here�s how to customize the new operating system to your liking.

Put Your Documents Where You Want Them After installing Windows 98, you�ll notice the My Documents folder is now located on your desktop. Here�s how to move this folder to where you want it. Right-click the My Documents folder, select Remove from Desktop, and click Yes to confirm. Doing so automatically moves the folder to the root of the drive on which Windows 98 is installed. Once the My Documents folder is off the desktop, you can move it wherever you want (and rename it, too), just as you would any other folder.

With the root of your hard drive displayed in one window and the destination folder visible in another, right-click and drag the My Documents folder to its new home, let go, and select Move Here. (Note: When Windows 98 asks, click Yes to confirm that you want to move Desktop.ini.)

Back to Menu Basics

Right-click an icon, a Taskbar item, or the desktop, and what do you get? Menus, just as you�d expect. But one look will tell you that these are no ordinary menus. Check out those special effects as the menus roll onto the screen!

Great. Neat-o. Annoying. Want to turn the animations off so the menus pop up faster, without being so distracting? Right-click the desktop, select Properties, and click the Effects tab. Deselect "Animate windows, menus and lists," and click OK. You�ll get inanimate menus, plain and simple.

Do The Start Menu Shuffle

Do you need to move one of your Start menu items? For example, perhaps you�d like to move an entire folder out of the Programs menu onto the main Start menu so you don�t have to go through as many menus to get to it.

Select Start and navigate to the folder or item you want to move. Right-click the item, then hold down the right button as you navigate back or forward through the Start menu to the item�s new home. (Just hold the mouse pointer over any menu you�d like to expand, as usual.)

When you see a black horizontal line in this space, let go and select Move Here from the pop-up menu.

Tip: Don�t let go of the mouse pointer while a menu item is highlighted, or you�ll open that item�s context menu and have to start over.

Global Viewing

Would you like to use the same View options, such as Details and Arrange Icons by Date, for all open folder windows? You couldn�t set these options globally in Windows 95, but in Windows 98 you can set your system�s default viewing options from any open folder window. (Note: Toolbar settings don�t apply.)

Open a folder window and set the viewing options the way you want them for all folders. Then select View, Folder Options, and in the dialog box that opens, click the View tab. Click the Like Current Folder button, click Yes to confirm, then click OK. From now on, every folder window will open with these same View options already set.

The Windows 98 Installation Dilemma

 

Though it�s not as easy as straight upgrade, we recommend the "clean" install route for a performance boost.

by Brian McWilliams, PC World Daily News Radio

June 25, 1998 3:07 p.m. PT

Now that you�ve decided to upgrade, you need to consider the next tough question: How to do the upgrade. Most people currently running Windows 95 on a fairly new PC will do fine just to install Windows 98 over it. But for some users a "clean" install may be worth the extra trouble.

Even if you buy the so-called "Upgrade" version of Win 98, you can still install it on an empty, formatted hard disk. Just be sure to have your old Win 95 CD-ROM handy during the set-up so the new operating system can confirm it�s an upgrade. And before you wipe your hard disk clean, make sure you have a boot disk with drivers for your CD-ROM drive.

Why bother with a clean install of Win 98? Even if all goes well, you�ll still have to spend extra time re-installing your applications, which can be hassle, especially if you�ve misplaced CD-ROMs, license numbers, and updates.

But PC World senior associate editor and Win 98 guru Scott Spanbauer says he�s a big fan of the clean install. Spanbauer says that a clean install will result in a performance boost to your system, which is the result of a more compact system Registry, a reduction in the number of conflicting DLL files, and increased hard disk space.

Another plus of the clean install is that you get more control up front over which Windows 98 components are added. Unlike with previous versions of Windows or an upgrade of Win 98, you don�t get to pick from a menu of installation options when you install over a Win 95 installation.

Once you�ve got Win 98 purring along and all your devices and applications working properly, you�re ready to contemplate another important decision: whether or not to convert your hard disk to the more efficient FAT32 file system, if you hadn�t already. The gotcha here is that Win 98 has a one-way FAT32 installer. You can�t revert back to FAT16, nor can you uninstall Win 98 once you�ve converted�unless you were previously running FAT32 under Win

95 OSR2.

Spanbauer strongly recommends that you convert at some point. Besides the extra hard disk space you�ll gain from converting to FAT32�s smaller disk clusters, you�ll also be able to take advantage of the application launch accelerator that�s built into Win 98�s disk defragmenter. Our testing found, for example, that the Win 98 launch accelerator on a FAT32 system cut the load time for Netscape's Navigator 4 browser in half.