1. There are some things you can do to a PC when it slows down. Lets deal with the obvious ones first. Always scan your hard drive with an up-to-date virus scanner. Symantec makes an excellent anti-virus software or you can download the FPROT program (currently fp-224c.zip) from the web at: ftp://archie.au/pc/garbo/pc/virus. A virus can bring a previously speedy PC to a crawl. Your hard disk may also be fragmented making disk access a drag. Running the MS DOS scandisk can inform you of this condition and can defragment your disk if need be. Is your disk full? Run MSD.EXE from the DOS prompt and check the disk section for free space.
Is it still slow? Well, Alex, you may be faced with a Windows reload. There are many mysterious problems buried in Windows and unless you're a Windows expert, a reload is about the best medicine there is. This will clean your system of any junk settings files and give Windows a fresh set of resources to work with. This is not as hard as it sounds and you can do it purely as a test and then revert back to your old Windows if it doesn't help. Reinstalling affects the C:\WINDOWS directory so unless you keep your documents here, your data will not be affected.

Firstly, go to the DOS prompt and change to the root directory so your prompt says: C:>
Now, rename your Windows directory to something else:
C:> MOVE \WINDOWS \WINOLD
Now, put in disk one of your Windows disk and type:
A:> SETUP
And when prompted for an installation directory by the install
program let it create:
C:\WINDOWS

Once Windows is installed you may need to reinstall some software. Run the Netscape installer and test the dialup connection. Before running Netscape (and after installing it), you can start up Trumpet (tcpman.exe) from the file manager to make the Net connection and see if things are faster. Hopefully all will be well and you can reinstall your other software. For some programs it is sufficient to create an icon and run it, for others you must install them again from the disks.

Not much better? Want to go back to your old Windows?
C:> MOVE \WINDOWS \WINNEW
C:> MOVE \WINOLD \WINDOWS
Then reboot.

The final option is to install Windows 95 which has an excellent 32-bit TCP/IP stack included, negating the need for Trumpet Winsock alltogether. Windows 95 also manages its resources better than Windows 3.1.

2. The Internet Explorer keeps a history of which sites you've visited (20 days by default in version 3) simply so you can go back to sites if you want to. Because they are only locations (URLs) and not content, they take up very little space. If you wish to limit your history, go to View--Options--Navigation and reduce the number of days it keeps the URLs there. I don't believe you can turn it off completely.
Internet Explorer 3 keeps temporary copies of pages you have recently browsed. Have a look at View--Options--Advanced--Settings. If the page has changed since you were last there Internet Explorer can check this. Browsing can be speeded up if this check is only performed at the beginning of each session (every time you start Internet Explorer). For dynamic data which gets updated quickly such as up-to-the-minute finance information, set it to check for newer versions of stored pages every time you visit the page.
This is a bit slower, but you will always get the page in its most up-to-date version. When Internet Explorer runs out of the disk space you have allocated it (a small proportion of your total disk space), it throws out the oldest files to make room.
- Tony Locke