The problem with just deleting those old, unused icons is that when you next boot up, Windows may not know what has happened to them and will create an error message asking to find them. There is no real harm in this, however.

But much better than deleting an icon is to uninstall the entire program. This will not only delete the icon, but also create more free space on your hard drive, eliminate any processes which may have happened to run in the background, and generally erase from the Windows Registry any remnants of the program (some uninstall procedures are better than others in doing this, some still leave traces in the Registry).

You can do this very easily. You go to Control Panel and then to "Add or Remove Programs." Then a list of your installed programs will appear, find the one you want to delete, and have at it.

Even if you have already just deleted the icon for a program, it should still show up in the Add and Remove Programs - so you can go there and safely delete it.

Of course you should only use this procedure for programs that you are absolutely sure you will never, ever use again. If there is even a remote possibility that you will use it in the future, then don't use this procedure. Instead, you can just move the program icon to another folder to get it off the desktop - I think Brian posted about how to do that.

Also keep in mind that there will no bandwidth gain, no matter how many desktop icons you either move or delete. This is not the thing to do to increase internet speed, but it can make for a more organized and/or cleaner desktop. Actually removing the entire program could affect bandwidth, but if it is just one or two programs, not by very much unless it was a misbehaving program. So, even deleting programs is not recommended to increase internet speed.

There is a lot to say for doing some routine computer housekeeping. Brian mentioned about defragging. I have schedules that automatically defrag my hard drives on a regular basis. Also, the Desktop Cleanup can be useful, especially if you have let it become "overgrown." But also beware of overdoing things - for example, there are a lot of scam software programs out there that promise to do a lot of these housekeeping activities, and if you are not careful, they will definitely prune too much.

rfinney