You probably have more applications running than you think: Press Ctrl+Alt+Del to bring up the Close Program box. Even with all the obvious, top-level apps shut down, chances are you'll still see a bunch of invisible background applications running. (For a more complete list of hidden programs, run WinTune98 on the WINDOWS Magazine Web site.) Each running app eats a little of your CPU time, with a net result of slowing things down. Some apps are worse than others. Microsoft Office's Find Fast is a notorious CPU hog, as are many anti-virus and "disk doctor" apps that run constantly in the background. For programs like these, use the Custom option in each program's Setup applet to control what runs in the background. Use Win98's System Configuration Utility (\WINDOWS\SYSTEM\MSCONFIG.EXE) to control which system-level tasks load at startup. |