Page 65 - Computeractive - January 2, 2018 UK

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How d o I c lear File
Explorer s earches?

Q I’ve been u sing PCs reasonably
proficiently for a f ew years now ,
recently buying a n ew Windows
10 laptop to complement my Windows 7
desktop workhorse. W hile making an
effort t o l earn the n ew operating s ystem
I n oticed that the s earch b ar in Windows
Explorer remembers m y p revious Erasing search history in File
searches, m uch l ike C hrome d oes ( that’s Explorer ( above) and W indows
my preferred w eb browser). I’d n ever Exporer (right)
noticed this in Windows 7 b ut, s ure
enough, w hen I fi red u p W indows methods to achieve what
Explorer on my desktop and s tarted you w ant a re different — s o
typing in the s earch b ar, I w as presented we’ll e xplain e ach o ne.
with suggestions that I r ecognised a s o ld File Explorer makes i t
searches. I d on’t think there’s a nything very easy to clear t he search
embarrassing in there b ut, a s I s hare both history, t hough you d o n eed
my PCs with my partner, I’d l ike t o e rase to know where t o l ook. before you b egin, j ust i n c ase you m ake a
or at least m anage t his h istory — b ut I First, click i n t he search bar a s u sual. mistake.
have no idea h ow. C ould you e xplain? Then, in the O ptions category of the To start, press W indows key+R, t hen
John Waters ribbon’s S earch t ab, c lick ‘Recent type regedit i n t he Run b ox and h it Enter.
searches’ f ollowed b y ‘ Clear s earch Now , in the l eft-hand pane, n avigate t o
A First u p, we should point o ut history’ ( see s creenshot above). HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\
Microsoft\Windows\CurrentV e rsion\
that Microsoft renamed
Windows E xplorer doesn’t h ave t his
Windows E xplorer in Windows option. I n f act, the o nly w ay to erase the Explorer\WordWheelQuery. S till in
10, w here it’s now k nown as File search history in the W indows 7 v ersion the l eft-hand pane, r ight-click t he
Explorer. D espite a v isual o verhaul i t i s of the t ool i s t o e dit t he Windows r egistry. WordWheelQuery folder a nd then
more or less t he same tool as before. As ever when making changes t o t he choose D elete (see screenshot above)
However, on this one p articular point t he registry, w e’d s trongly a dvise b acking up followed by Y e s t o c onfirm.

Do I n eed to defrag m y new S SD?D??

Q My hard drive f ailed SSD. I a m have System s ensible a nd the
s o I h ad
R estore enabled
w
a n
it replaced
(as i s b oth
ith
told that defragmenting it is default). This i s n ormal
unnecessary and c auses premature and q uite safe, a nd
‘wear’. L oads o f a dmittedly unvalidated Windows k nows what
websites suggest i t’s u nnecessary. it’s doing.
Please could you l et me know what, if The background t o a ll this is that,
any , maintenance is necessary, a nd unlike t raditional hard drives, a n S SD
Y o u d o
whether d eleted d ocuments need to be uses memory chips f or storage — a nd not n eed to
electronically ‘ shredded’ to prevent these are c ertified only f or a l imited defrag S SDs, like
recovery or not? number of read/write cycles. H owever, this C rucial m odel
Tony Hoy that number is enormous a nd reaching it
would t ake v ery m any y ears of normal shredding i s s imilarly fine, if you f eel
A Y o u d on’t need to defrag an use. Even t hen, the c hip i n q uestion the n eed, b ut disable any m ultiple-pass
won’t a utomatically i nstantly die: it’s just
SSD
options: t hey’re unnecessary on an
b ut no great h arm is
likely to arise if you d id. a p ossibility. SSD. Files deleted f rom h ard d rives c an
Indeed, d espite received wisdom, Defragging involves lots of read/write leave m agnetic ‘residues’ t hat, in
Windows w ill periodically e nact some cycles. A s t he process d oesn’t speed up theory, c ould allow s omeone to
degree of defragging on an SSD i f y ou SSDs, i t’s b asically p ointless. File- resurrect t he file.

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