User's Manual

Glossary
TuneUp Utilities 2006 101
Partition
A defined section of a hard disk that can be accessed and handled as a separate
drive.
Password
An individual string of characters that allows a user to access a computer system
or network.
Path
A path indicates where a file is saved on a drive. For example, the name of a
picture file is “logo.bmp”, and this file is located in the folder “Windows”. This
folder is located on the drive that is labeled with the letter “C”. The path of this
file would be “C:\Windows\logo.bmp”.
Performance
In computers, performance expresses the speed of the system in executing
commands or programs.
Peripherals
This term refers to all devices that are connected to a computer, such as screens,
keyboards, disk drives, printers, etc.
Permanent paging file
A special paging file in Windows that always occupies the same location and
that is stored in a contiguous area on the disk. This results in improved speed in
the management of the system’s virtual memory over a temporary paging file.
Processor cache
Temporary memory that is integrated into the processor itself. Data is stored in
this memory so that the processor does not have to wait until it is fetched from
the slower main memory of the computer. This allows the processor to work
faster.
Prompt
The symbol used by MS-DOS to tell the user that the program is ready for input.
The prompt normally consists of the drive letter and the greater than sign (“>”).
RAM
Short for “random access memory”. This refers to the physical main memory of
a computer.
Random access memory
Fast memory (also called main memory) that can be read from and written to as
needed. The contents of this memory are lost when the power is switched off.