Any tips on cleaning up the hard drive?

7 Comments

1. Brady says:

   August 13, 2010 at 11:56 am

   The ultimate way to clean up your harddrive is to reinstall Windows. It takes a lot of preparation and you must have a decent amount of computer knowledge but it is well worth it. Even Microsoft recommends reinstalling windows every 8 months to a year to maintain performance. You should have a restore disc from you computer manufacture that you can use to do this. *REMEMBER TO BACKUP*
2. TMH says:

   August 13, 2010 at 11:56 am

   I recommend WinPatrol to keep things from not running in the background – that will help you maintain the cleanliness. This is the best program I’ve found for keeping it clean.

   After you’ve deleted programs using the control panel and you still see the folder, just delete it.

   Download the free trial of Disk Keeper and really clean up the junk after you go through and delete all the files you don’t want.

   Also, go to http://www.pcpitstop.com and run the complete free tune-up. That will help.

   Take a look at the website below and will give you a lot of options for optimizing your system.

   Good luck!
3. Name one way your not Hitler says:

   August 13, 2010 at 11:56 am

   that CCleaner is absolutley great. Also try to do disk defrag and remove all programs from the add/remove programs tab under the control panel. It sounds like you’ve got spy wear. I would give up now if thats so because spywear reinstalls it self after you delete it (very hard to get rid off). I would just reboot the computer from the operating system. You have CDs im sure that wipe the computer entirley clean and start with XP and then some other software and you can reinstall the rest. GL!
4. shmifty_14 says:

   August 13, 2010 at 11:56 am

   http://www.ccleaner.com

   This is the best cleaning program known to man.
5. maddagger says:

   August 13, 2010 at 11:56 am

   i suggest getting diskeeper.u set it and forget it.works like a charm.
6. videowebchatman says:

   August 13, 2010 at 11:56 am

   You don’t mention how large your drive is or if it is partitioned into multiple drives which makes it hard to answer your question
   Right click the Recycle Bin to see properties
   You can make the Bin smaller and gain back some GB’s on larger drives
   The recycle bin at 10% of 34.5 GB is 3.45GB
   If you cut that down to 1 GB or less you would save 2.45 +GB right here
   Easy quick free space
   I am presuming that your computer is running OK and space is your only issue

   Also in System in Control panel you can make the space available for System Restore smaller too
   Let us know how many GB’s you saved

   As for your other questions don’t mess with the registry unless
   you really know what you are doing……..you won’t save much space there anyway
   Yes you can delete unremoved folders after using uninstall

   There are small cheap programs available that will diagram what is using the space on your drive
   i can’t remember any names but should be easy to find with google
   I discovered that the log files from Zone Alarm were using 500+MB