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Support > How to clean Windows

Computer hard drives tend to get loaded up with data that may have once served its purpose but now is just taking up space. Cleaning out files that you no longer need is simple when you use the appropriate tools that are included in Windows-based computer systems.

When a hard drive is filled to near capacity, the computer must work harder at everything it does. In addition, new programs won't fit, storage capacity won't allow large files to be saved and overall system performance slows to a crawl. System errors occur and the PC becomes vulnerable to crashing. Even a PC that has plenty of hard drive space available will benefit from a good cleaning.

First, open Windows Explorer by right-clicking on the Start Button. Next, right click on the hard drive, usually designated as the C: Drive. A menu with a list of options opens up. Choose Properties from the menu.



Next, the Local Disk Properties screen appears:

You'll notice this hard drive is nearly full. Let's click the Disk Cleanup button and free up some space.



By clicking OK, we will free up 311,293K of hard drive space. Most of this space is filled up with temporary files. The utility will prompt you to be sure you really want to perform the action.

Now that the disk cleanup has done its job, we can take it a step further and free up even more space by clicking the More Options tab.



First, we'll clean up the Windows components. By cleaning this section you are choosing to remove optional components of Windows that you don't use on a regular basis. Windows XP Setup will launch and you can choose which components to disable. You can re-enable them at any time.



Choose any components you do not use and remove them.



Next, let's clean up installed programs. Go back to the Disk Cleanup utility and click cleanup located in the Installed Programs section. The Add and Remove Programs box opens.



You'll see a list of programs that are installed on your PC that you can remove. You'll also see statistics such as when it was last used. In this case, we'll remove AccuTerm 97 because it was installed for a one-time project and is no longer needed. We'll go through the list and remove programs no longer desired. In addition, we'll install the Cars video game because it is taking up 603 MB of space. If you have the original CD-ROM installation disc, you can reinstall it the next time you wish to play the game.

Be careful not to remove any programs that are called Hot Fixes or any system updates. These are critical to your PC's security. Removing them will make your system vulnerable.

Once you've removed the programs you no longer desire, go back to the Disc Cleanup screen and choose the bottom option, System Restore and choose Clean Up. This will remove all but the latest restore point. Do this to keep the most recent restore point and discard the others. You may not want to do this if you have specific restore points you want to keep, for example if you recently added new hardware and created a restore point to use in the event the hardware conflicts with your system. If your system hasn't been updated lately and everything is functioning properly you can make the judgment call whether to remove previous restore points or not.

Now that we've cleaned up the hard drive using the Disk Cleanup utility, let's take a look at how much free space we've recovered - just under 3 gigabytes!



We have accomplished a recovery of about 20% of this particular hard drive's storage space. The PC will now have breathing room and its performance will increase as well. All of the components removed were either temporary or unneeded. No data was touched.

Support > How to clean Windows