When you installed your Web browser it set up a subdirectory under the main program directory to cache your visited pages. Caching is a quick and dirty way to speed up your Web surfing experience by storing the pages on your hard disk. By having the page data stored locally, your browser can access the page right from your PC rather than waiting for it to download from the network. Result - the next time you access a page you have visited previously, it loads quickly from your hard disk. Things happen a lot faster.

The problem is that after a few hours of surfing the Web, your hard disk can become bloated with thousands of files. It makes for faster browsing but it slows down your disk.

If you use Netscape Navigator or Microsoft's Internet Explorer clearing your cache can be a simple point - and - click operation.

Netscape users can click on Options / Network Preferences and select the Cache Tab. Click on Clear Disk Cache and it's done.

For Internet Explorer users click on View / Options select the Advanced Tab then click on the Empty button.

Clearing the browser's cache will slow down the time it takes to load sites you've been to before, but it will speed up the time it takes for your browser to load when you launch it.