Susan Chapman wrote: > Hi all, > > I need to clean off my hard drive on my beige G3. It's almost full. > > I can easily start trashing stuff outside of my system folder but I'm > wondering if there is a good program out there that will delete all the > extensions that come along with everything we install? I'm a little timid > to start trashing things in my system folder I'm not sure what they do. > > Thanks in advance oh wise list :) > > Susan > > > The next meeting of the Louisville Computer Society will be September 24 > For more information, see <http://www.aye.net/~lcs>. A calendar of > activities is at <http://www.calsnet.net/macusers>. > > > There are programs that exist to do what you want, but I've never found them to be 100% reliable.
Clean Sweep & Aladdin's Spring Cleaning come to mind immediately, but last time I tested one of those, it tried to trash most of my internet prefs. In fact Spring Cleaning tried to toss a number of prefs for applications I use on a regular basis (something it's supposed to know about.) The information from Extensions Manager can give you a pretty good handle on what does what with what. Extensions Overload is a really good shareware program that provides information on thousands of Extensions and Control Panels. Conflict Catcher's database is also pretty extensive. I use Conflict Catcher to list files by company so I know what's been installed by whom. Extensions Manager also lists by company IIRC or maybe by "package" so you'll have a good idea where a questionable file comes from. If you'd like to do it by hand, it's not really difficult. I move questionable extensions and control panels to a desktop folder. Then try your applications and see if they work. If they report a missing extension, put it back in. Prefs files can usually be trashed without any problem. I say usually because a number of them carry registration information. On Systems lower than X, one way to salvage some disk space is to trash all the old printer files and descriptions you don't need. Apple's installer, even though it's been told not to, will usually install the software for every Apple printer out there. Have fun, rob The next meeting of the Louisville Computer Society will be September 24 For more information, see <http://www.aye.net/~lcs>. A calendar of activities is at <http://www.calsnet.net/macusers>.
