I want to clean out my hard drive so my computer can run faster. I was wondering if there is a way to clean my hard drive and only have windows xp left on it?

i need a free program that will get rid of stuff that has been deleted from my add and remove programs but still in my hard drive please help me

Custom Build PC. Started having glitches in almost all programs. Usual operations, just this day starting acting all weird/glitches.

I scanned with AVG and got the following changes.

Partition table (MBR) Change
Boot Sector of disc Change
Kernel32.dll Change
wsock32.dll Change
user 32.dll Change
shell32.dll Change
ntoskrnl.exe Change

I attempted to get into System Restore but I get an new window that only allows me to report a windows error.

I got into BIOS, changed to boot from CD-Rom. Put Win XP Disc in and it boots. When I select repair it tells me I have no hard drive recognized. When I attempted to re-install, it tells me I have no hard drive recognized.

NO. 1: Virus? If so, do I just get something like Norton which will allow me to restore to a earlier time? Full Scan with AVG picked up notta except the changes I’ve included herein.

NO. 2: Glitch? I’m lucky to have had a couple years no problems and today is my problem day? It’s a computer, computers get glitches? Am I able to undo the changes to bring me "back to normal?"

NO 3, Good computer tech can breeze through this in 3 minutes?

NO 4, Is there a back-door to get into system restore to restore to a previous time?

I did de-frag the hard drive which took nearly 7 hours (250-gig). I did a Win. System Clean up which took 30 min.

De-frag normally takes 30-min at best. System Clean up takes usually 2-3.

Now de-frag and System Clean up taking the usual short periods of time.

After pressing F8 to accept the Microsoft agreement it brings you to the partition page that displays your hard drives and partition. The problem is that nothing shows up here for me to do anything. I’ve tested the hard drive and memory. I’ve also tried swapping drives to see what would happen, but same thing. Any advice would help, thanks everyone.

My father’s computer is very slow and it makes a grinding noise when it has to process information. I’m pretty sure it’s not a problem on the software end. I think maybe the RAM is toast or the hard drive damaged. Is there a diagnostic tool in XP (or maybe in BIOS) that can run checks on my hardware to see if they are performing as they should?