This website shows you various system utilities that you can use to make your PC perform “like new” again.
Free up Disk Space
Freeing up disk space helps you not only have extra storage on your PC but also speeds up the PC and enhances its performance.
There are many ways of freeing up disk space and some of them are listed below:
Disk Clean up
Disk clean up will help you get rid of some of the files that you are not using but are taking up space on your machine. Probably the only reason why you have not deleted these files yourself is that they are not clearly visible to you and chances are you have ignored them.
You can run the disk check in the following manner:
Click Start -->All programs -->Accessories -->System Tools
-->Click Disk Clean up.
Running a Disk Clean up will free up disk space for you by getting rid of all the below mentioned files, you can choose to keep some of those intact if you so decide yourself by not checking the box when the option comes.
1. Remove Temporary Internet Files
2. Remove downloaded program files
3. Remove installed programs not in use now
4. Empty Recycle bin
5. Remove Windows temporary files
6. Remove optional Windows component that you do not use
Manually remove unwanted programs
There are various software and programs that we keep downloading and installing
on our systems thinking that some day we’ll need it but that day never
comes. At other times there are programs that we used once but now rarely ever
use.
You can use the “Add / Remove Programs” feature and get rid off
any such programs.
Click Start -->Control Panel -->Add Remove Programs
Here you see a list of programs that are installed on your machine. You are
also prompted by the system whether the programs are rarely, occasionally or
frequently used based on which you can decide to get rid off them.
This tool gives a good idea of the programs that are not in use and can be gotten
rid of but most of the cases you will also need to delete these software from
the hard disk also once you remove them from the Add / Remove Programs. This
is because in some cases the Add / Remove function will only get rid of the
executable files whereas the other files in the folder still remain on your
hard disk wasting space.
Defragmentation
When one creates a small file it uses up a full disk sector which ranges any
where from 2 KB to 32 KB. If your system is low on space Windows will break
up the large file and then fit in the chunks in the available space.
Defragmentation
frees up space in the sense that the computer shuffles files on the hard disk
to regain space which is lost through the daily creation and deletion of files.
Scandisk
Files go corrupt on many occasions, for instance you may shut down the computer when an application was trying to open a file, in such cases luckily the application creates a temporary back up of the file which goes corrupt and at the maximum one loses disk space.
Running a scan disk is a good way to reclaim that space back.
Getting rid of attachments if you are using Outlook
One of the most innocuous ways of wasting space is by having same attachments in multiple e-mails, while this may sound very petty think of it. You receive an e-mail with a 2 mb attachment and then you forward it to some one else. So you are wasting space worth 2 mbs as the attachment would be there in your inbox as well as your Sent items.
The number of forwards fun or otherwise is as high as even half of all emails for a lot of us. Keeping an eye on the attachments and getting rid of the unwanted ones will free up more space than you can imagine.
A combination of these methods will really help you to get rid of junk on your
hard disk and not only will it free up space for you it will also improve the
performance of the PC by making it faster.