Online Services: This folder of free trials persists despite the ubiquitous AOL CDs coming in the mail, and often it's competitors CDs coming as well. Often despite deselecting this in the install process the folder gets put into the Program Files directory or on the desktop. MSN also has a bad tendency of showing up as well. Check Add/Remove Programs in the Control Panel for an entry to remove these, and after doing that go ahead and delete the folders it often leaves anyway. If an Add/Remove entry exists DO use it, as this will tend to remove registry entries and sometimes hidden shortcuts to the folders and files it may still leave behind.

Desktop and Start menu shortcuts: These are installed in as many as 5 places because Microsoft seems to think you are too stupid to find the program you want without them. Pick the part of the Start menu, Quicklaunch bar, or the desktop and keep or put a shortcut to the program there and get rid of the rest.

Support text files, and readme files: These files are items few people even know are there, are for, and are even more rarely used. The issues they address are usually even more obscure than their presence on your system (how many home users need to worry about Novel networks, and how many pros use 9x for serious networks and databases?). Most of these are in the C:\Windows directory, and more are in the subdirectories of C:\Program Files\Accessories and C:\Program Files\Common files\system. As you will see later most readme files are pointless after one read through anyway from any given program.

Chat, FrontPage, and other Microsoft product folders: For those Microsoft pieces of software bundled with Windows that you didn't install, oddly enough you often find folders in C:\Program Files . Check for any dll files in them, if you see none kill the directory. Empty directories just take up bits of drive space and waste search time, rendering time, etc.

Wallpapers, patterns, sounds, screensavers: Windows gives you a nice collection of comfortable (mundane?) images and sounds to make your computer more 'personal' - or give you less drive space and bore you to death. In the C:\Windows directory you will find plenty of .bmp files of patterns and wallpaper you will never use, and those files are not all that small for what they do. In C:\Windows\Media you will find sounds that you will never use as well, but you should go into Sounds or Multimedia (depending on the exact version and distribution of 9x you have) in the Control Panel and turn off or change the sounds you don't want or like if they are in use by default. Once you have avoided such absent file conflicts, delete the extra noise. In much the same way you can trim out some of the screensavers you don't want. Windows let's you chose certain groups of screensavers when you install, but you can reduce that number even further by looking them over in Display in the Control Panel then deleting the files ( .scr ) of those you don't want from the C:\Windows\System directory.

Web, channels, and Favorites: Here is another thing you can not choose not to install that is a heap of things you will not care about ever using more likely than not. The C:\Windows\Web folder can in some cases hold a megabyte or more of pure clutter. That directory holds only a few things needed for use when web style integration is used to browse your system. If you look around there you can pretty well figure out the extra things put there for Disney.com, Wired, and what have you. In the C:\Windows\Favorites folder you will find almost all default entries are useless to you. you can delete basically all of that folders contents, with the exception of the Links folder and possibly the channels folder. For those, empty them out and then right click the folder and choose properties. Make the folder a hidden one and you won't see it again but Windows won't waste time recreating it/them. You can also permanently remove the Links folder if you use a registry edit, detailed at http://www.winguides.com/registry/display.php/550/ but remember to read all the precautions carefully.

Extra fonts: Windows comes with more fonts than most people use, and even for those that like variety in fonts it comes with some that are less than exciting. Any font that is not a system font (denoted as .fon files) can generally be removed. I suggest you find a few of the True Type fonts (denoted as .ttf files) you like and ditch the rest that come with Windows. One font you should NEVER remove is Marlett, although it is normally hidden anyway. If you remove this peculiar looking font you will suddenly notice that the little buttons at the upper right of windows are blank. They have to get those from somewhere...

HyperTerminal dialing files: These files are installed in connection with the Online Services and other arcane intentions. you will find them for MCI, ATT, and others. Trash em. All you need is hypertrm.exe and hypertrm.dll, and hticons.dll may not even be necessary (haven't dug into it).

CD duplications: If you look in the C:\Windows\Cabs folder (or nearby) you will find some of the same install files, text files, icons, and other extras that are on the Windows CD. You didn't want to install them, yet they are there. Dump the files, leaving only cab, dll, sys, inf, and ini files behind. Especially notable is that AOL loves to ditch an installer here.