Clean your path

[charleychacko]

As you install and uninstall programs over a long period of time, you'll notice that some programs starts to run little bit slower. Once of the reasons for this maybe that your program search path is either contains too many directories, or it contains references to some directories that does not exist.
It's a good idea to check if your "PATH" environment variable is "clean," every so often.

If you're using Windows 95, look in your "AUTOEXEC.BAT" file for the PATH statement:

PATH=<list of directories separated by a semi colon>

If you're using Windows NT, go to "My Computer | Properties | Environment," and then look for a PATH statement in both "System" and "User" variables sections.

Now go through each directory in your PATH and see if they exist; if not, remove them from your PATH.

For example if your PATH contains

C:\WINDOWS;Z:\TEMP;C:\UTILS;

and if Z:\TEMP directory no longer exists (you can find out by running "DIR Z:\TEMP" from the "DOS/Command Prompt") change your PATH to:

C:\WINDOWS;C:\UTILS;