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Kitrax's guide to cleaning up your hard drive.

Discussion in 'Techno-Magic' started by Kitrax, Dec 24, 2006.

  1. Kitrax

    Kitrax Pantaloons are supposed to go where!?!?

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    [​IMG] Most of us have a lot of useless junk on our computers. Temporary internet files, programs you no longer need or use, saved email from 2 years ago, Windows components you don’t need or use, and much more all fit the bill. Each useless file ended up on your hard drive in several ways, but they all have one thing in common: they’re taking up space. This guide is going to help you clear out a lot (if not all) of the junk that has built up on your drive...without having to reformat the drive. :thumb:

    Let’s start by attacking the programs and Windows components you don’t need. But first, let’s make a System Restore point just to be safe.
    Go: Start > All Programs > Accessories > System Tools > System Restore.
    Make sure the ‘Create a Restore Point’ option is checked and click “next”. Give it a name, and then click “create”. Congratulations, if you manage to mess something up, you have something to fall back on; now on to the real guide.

    Open up the ‘Add or Remove Programs’ service.
    Go: Start > Settings > Control Panel > Add or Remove Programs.
    The default view is a list of all the programs you currently have installed. Scroll though the list, and if you see any programs that you no longer need, uninstall them.
    (Be careful as you uninstall programs. Some times a program may have several different listings in the Add or Remove Programs service. If you uninstall one program that has files/features which other programs may be dependant on, the dependant programs might become instable.)

    Make a list of the names of the programs that you uninstall as you go. When you’re done, you’ll need to get rid of the program’s directory along with all the files it didn’t delete.
    Go: My Computer > Local Disk (C:) > Program Files.
    If the files are hidden, click the “Show files” link. Once the folders are visible, look for anything with the same name as the program or the program’s authoring company (for example, if I uninstalled Photoshop, the folder Photoshop was installed to would be inside the ‘Adobe’ folder. However, if I uninstalled Trillian, the program has it’s own folder named ‘Trillian’ within the Program Files directory). Once you find what you’re looking for, delete the files and folders the program left behind.
    (Again, be careful as you do this. Some programs save files that you have made within their installation folder. Make sure you save anything you want to a different location first, before you delete everything else.)

    Once you have removed all the programs you don’t need, you can remove the Windows components you don’t need either. Click on the 3rd button down on the left side of the Add or Remove Programs service window. This will open up the Windows Components Wizard. Click on anything listed in the wizard and then click “details” to see what components are listed under that group. If you’re unsure of what you can safely remove, pretty much everything in the Accessories and Utilities group can be removed, along with Windows Messenger (this is not MSN Messenger), Outlook Express, Fax Services, and Windows Media Player (if you have another media player such as WinAMP, feel free to give the boot to WMP.)

    Ok, that took care of that portion...but there are several other things that can be deleted as well to save space and maintain security. Your computer saves a record of every website that you visit in temporary internet files, cookies, .jpeg/.gif files, as well as other files. Besides that, there are unused registry entries, files within the Recycling Bin, and dozens of other files in dozens of places. So how do you get rig of everything? Well, we are going to do it the smart way and let a snazzy (and free) program called CCleaner do the cleaning for us! To download CCleaner, head on over to: http://www.ccleaner.com/ and download the program (don’t worry; it’s less than 2MB). Once you download and install it run the program. Make sure everything is checked accept for the options under the ‘Advanced’ area. When you’re ready to clean your drive, press the “Analyze” button to see how much junk CCleaner will be removing. When you are ready, press the “Run Cleaner” button. CCleaner is a great program that does a lot of house keeping on your drive. I recommend using it about once a month or so. If you’re still wondering what the additional ‘C’ in CCleaner is for, it stands for crap.

    Ok, so now you have a squeaky clean hard drive, right? Wrong! You still have all the music, video, pictures, documents, saved email, and all the other files you never use any more. Now is the perfect time for you to look through your collections of these types of files, and delete the stuff you never use anymore. Get rid of your porn stash too...you don’t need it, and it’s taking up too much space. :p If you have sensitive data (like bank statements, tax information, etc) you might want to consider the free program File Shredder. It can delete/overwrite a file or whole directories up to 15 times to ensure that even the most advanced file recovery methods can’t recover your sensitive data from the dead!

    We’re almost finished. There are just a few more things that you can do to save space on your hard drive. Do you have Hibernate enabled, but rarely use it? Disable it and you’ll save about 1GB of space. Besides the System Restore point we created, do you rarely use the System Restore feature? You can minimize the amount to restore points it automatically creates, thus saving space. Do you have a lot of physical RAM (more than 3GB)? You can reduce the size of your system’s virtual memory, thus saving a lot of hard drive space. Read on to find out how.

    To disable Hibernate:
    Right click on your desktop > Properties > Screen Saver (Tab) > Power (button) > Hibernate (tab).
    Uncheck the Enable hibernation box.

    To minimize the amount of system restore points:
    Right click ‘My Computer > Properties > System Restore (tab) > Settings (button).
    Move the slider to the left to reduce the amount of space allocated to system restore points. I keep my slider to the 2nd notch from the left, which allows for about 4 restore points. If you think you’ll need more than that, move it to the right a little more.

    To reduce the amount of space the virtual memory takes up:
    Right click ‘My Computer > Properties > Advanced (tab) > Settings (the button within the Performance area) > Advanced (tab) > Change (button within the Virtual Memory area).
    Make sure your primary hard drive is selected at the top. In the ‘Initial Size’ box, type whatever amount you want it to be. I like to keep the number divisible by 64 (for example: 256, 512, or 1024). Then set the ‘Maximum Size’ to a number a little larger than the initial size. My settings are 512 and 640 for example. When you are ready, press the “Set” button, followed by the “Ok” button, followed by another “Ok” button, followed by another “Ok” button to save your settings and close all the active windows.

    Ok, so we’re pretty much done with the deleting of files...but chances are, you just removed a large amount of junk from your hard drive, leaving your drive fragmented. If you haven’t yet, restart your computer so the changes you’ve made will take effect. Once you’re back in Windows, run the Windows Disk Defragmenter program.

    Now for something unnecessary, but fun and useful. Hop on over to http://windirstat.info/ Scroll down the page (you’re reading as you go, right?) and download the WinDirStat utility. What the program does, is look at your drive, and displays the drive’s contents in graphical form, so you can see what files are taking up the most space. Looking at the product description, you can see that this person’s drive has a very large file, which, by looking to the right, suggests that he/she has the Paint Shop Pro 5 installation CDs copied to his/her hard drive as an .img file. Here’s a look at what my hard drive looks like:
    Kitrax's drive.
    For those nosy enough to ask, the large yellow areas are my game’s ‘play’ disks saved to my drive, the very large red area is my encrypted virtual drive, all the little blue areas grouped together is the result of my photography hobby, and all the teal areas grouped together is my Mp3 collection. :D

    So how did we do? Were you able to clear up a lot of space? If you were able to clear out at least 100MB, then my job here is done...well, in this area at least. :p

    If you liked this guide, check out my other two guides, and stay tuned for future guides as I slowly write them. Also, check out my site’s “PC Help and Guides” page to get the guides in their .doc form.
    Kitrax’s guide to killing Adware, Spyware, and Viruses.
    Kitrax’s guide to the System Configuration Utility for WinXP!

    Thanks for reading this guide, and remember: your hard drive needs some general hygiene too.
    ~Kitrax
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Aug 25, 2013
  2. Bahir the Red Gems: 18/31
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  3. Taza

    Taza Weird Modmaker Veteran

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    Taza's guide to cleaning up your hard drive:

    Backup everything important to an optical media.
    Reformat.
    Install software.
    Restore backups.
    Defragment.

    You ain't going to clean a Windows install any other way.
     
  4. Kitrax

    Kitrax Pantaloons are supposed to go where!?!?

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    Pfft. Some people can't, won't, or don't know how to reformat their drive. Plus, your way takes hours and hours to complete, you loose *everything*, and most people forget to back up at least some of their files.

    My guide is meant for those folks who are less then knowledgable in the tech area. Your way would work for someone who has a serious problem with their computer.

    Hey, thanks for the head's up! I'll get that fixed a.s.a.p. :thumb: :rolling:
     
  5. Aikanaro Gems: 31/31
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    Ah good - I need this, seeing that I'm down to 3 gig of free space :)
     
  6. Kitrax

    Kitrax Pantaloons are supposed to go where!?!?

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    How about one of the OPs make this thread a sticky? BTW, thanks to whoever stickied this thread. :thumb: :rolling:
     
  7. Saber

    Saber A revolution without dancing is not worth having! Veteran

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    Should I be able to delete old update things? Like iPod for Windos 10-05-2006 when I have the most recent one, or does it need both? (Another example: Java Updater 6 and Java updater 9)
     
  8. Kitrax

    Kitrax Pantaloons are supposed to go where!?!?

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    Good question Saber. Unless Apple and Sun Java are anything like M$, and release a new update for every little problem, then it should be safe to delete old update patches. However, old patches are useful if something comes up, and you need to roll back...
    To be safe, I'd drop the two companies a email asking them if it's safe.

    I used CCleaner of my dad's computer and it cleaned out 1,483,541 MB of useless junk... :eek: The really scary part is that there weren’t any temp. internet files of that 1.48GB thanks to a .bat file I made for him that deletes everything in the temp. internet files folder every time he starts his computer... :bad: :rolling:
     
  9. Saber

    Saber A revolution without dancing is not worth having! Veteran

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    Two more questions/comments:
    1. My System Restore point was all the way to the right! :eek: If I switch it to the middle (my computer has a tendency to scare me... I like having some restore points), how often will it create a restore point?

    2. My virtual memory is at 1536 - 3072... what are the benefits of having it that high or having it lower? If I were to set it a few steps down, what would it do to the performance of my computer (I am basically asking what the hell virtual memory is :p )


    Err, and looking through CCleaner, it has Adaware checked off, as well as stuff like Adobe Reader, Azureus, and Windows Media player, all of which I use. Was it planning on uninstalling those, or just cleaning excess junk in them? 'Cause personally I would like to keep WinRAR/Zip, etc.
     
  10. BlckDeth Gems: 7/31
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    Most internet browsers, such as Firefox, allow you the option of deleting your temp. internet files/history/cookies upon closing the browser. So most people would have little need for that, but this was still a handy guide, thanks for the submit.
     
  11. Kitrax

    Kitrax Pantaloons are supposed to go where!?!?

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    Another good question. To be honest, I don't really know. But I do know that having it set all the way to the right is far too *much*! Reduce that thing post-haste! :p
    A good way to find out however would be to reduce the slider to the half way mark, restart your computer and see if the restore points left are enough for your needs. If there are still several points, you might want to reduce it a little more.

    Virtual memory is best described by Wikipedia. In a nutshell, it can store things typically stored in the RAM on the hard drive instead. The downside to this is that hard drive transfer speeds are *much* slower than RAM. If you don't have a lot of RAM, reducing your virtual memory might cause some issues. Having your virtual memory set at 1536 - 3072 (that's roughly 1.53GB - 3.07GB) just allows your system to move more items that would typically sit in your RAM on to your HDD. If I were you, I'd reduce it...3GB is a lot to waste on VM. :hmm:

    In some ways, that's a good thing, for people like me, that creates more of a pain in the butt. My SPS account here requires me to log in 2 to remove all ADs and be able to post here. That's just example of many. :rolling:
     
  12. Saber

    Saber A revolution without dancing is not worth having! Veteran

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    Do you have any suggestions as to a good level for it? Or, is there anyway to get it to store information on my other hard-drive? Its 186gb...

    And what about the CCleaner thing? Does it delete the entire program, or just useless junk inside the programs?
     
  13. Erod Gems: 14/31
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    Ideally, the virtual memory should reside on a separate physical HD (other than where your Windows and software are located). So yes, it is possible to change the location, it is done from the same place where you can adjust the size (see Kitrax's first post).
     
  14. Kitrax

    Kitrax Pantaloons are supposed to go where!?!?

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    It cleans out what's left of an uninstalled program, logs, temporary internet files, cookies, browser history, recent opened documents history (not the actual document), auto-complete, and others. There are over 20 areas of cleaning, not including what's listed in the 'Applications' tab.

    To find out what it actually cleans, take a look at CCleaner's feature list. :thumb: :rolling:
     
  15. Da Rock Gems: 5/31
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    My virtual memory resides on the first partition of my 2nd drive. The partition functions as nothing more than a "temporary" memory location - some applications require a temporary directory location (like decent wav editors). This drive does that too.
    I like to think that it keeps the system more secure, as some crackers wouldn't think to look for the pagefile on another drive (hackers, on the other hand, would). I may be wrong, but it currently remains in my idealised bubble of hope.

    I was surprised to find 0.5GB of crap on my system, by using CCleaner. However, after running the registry cleaner, it failed to find the 53 problems that "Registry Mechanic" found.

    Good piece of software nonetheless - and I commend your article!

    One tip Kitrax - not Windows Defragmenter. Get another one. A better one. A piece of software that is designed to do the job, rather than the M$ "quickfix" program, in an O/S that (quoting IWD2's Bard class) "is a jack of all trades, but a master of none".
     
  16. Kitrax

    Kitrax Pantaloons are supposed to go where!?!?

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    Well, to defend the program, it isn't designed to *fix* problems in the registry...just clean it up a bit. Registry Mechanic is the ideal tool for fixing the registry...but it's can't do what CCleaner does, just like CCleaner can't do what Registry Mechanic can. :thumb:

    Well, the guide was meant to only include free tools, so that kicks Disk Keeper off the list. If you know of any defrag utilities that are free (and actually work), then let us know.
    Thanks! :thumb: :rolling:
     
  17. Da Rock Gems: 5/31
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    Well, I got this off another forum. I've read most of it and seems to equate well with opinions of the "general poplace":

    http://www.techsupportalert.com/best_46_free_utilities.htm

    (Part 26 has free Reg Cleaners)

    ...and as you say, CCleaner is not a Registry Cleaner - the above link also states something similar.
     
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