Win Delete97 is out.
Its main function is to tidy up hard disks by expunging unnecessary files.
The program does what Windows 3.1 and Windows 95 ought to do automatically. Windows 3.1 and (to a lesser extent) Windows 95 are notorious for littering hard disks with unnecessary files.
In fact, WinDelete97 is the wrong name for this software. It should be called Bill Gates’s Mum.
WinDelete97 tidies up hard disks by identifying duplicate files; files that have been unused for a user-stated period (say six months); unnecessary cache files created by internet software; unnecessary DLL files created by removed software; invalid shortcuts; back-up and temporary files; and disk-error files.
The software compresses them into an archive file. You can then delete the original files. If your computer works without them, you can delete the archive files as well after a week or so.
My hard drive has been running on the edge for some months. I called in Bill Gates’s Mum.
It found 962 unnecessary files! It cleared 33 megabytes of space. My computer runs faster because you need at least 20 megabytes of hard drive to act as a swapfile to make software run optimally. And I have a little space left over for some more software.
Bill Gates’s Mum also has a virus detector; a zip utility; a Windows tuner; a charter to look at how often various files are used; and a more user-friendly interface for disk scanning and defragmenting and getting rid of unnecessary bits of INI files.
The software needs CD-ROM; 5MB of hard disk space; 8MB RAM; Windows 95.