CLEANING OUT THE
COMPUTER
The computer tends to gather a lot of garbage as
time goes on in the form of old files, fragments of uninstalled programs left
behind, updated programs that no longer use pervious files and temporary files
that weren't erased. Programs that were the rage last year lie fallow this year. The
photo album you spent six months on hasn't been touched in two years. Ten year old
letters are cluttering up your My Documents folder. It's time to do some cleaning.
Hard drives are bigger than ever today, but on older
systems, hard drive space can become an issue - especially after installing a couple of
the newer programs designed to go into huge hard drives. A twenty gigabyte hard drive
today isn't even big enough to hold Windows XP with most of today's programs, let alone any
video or music files. When
the hard drive containing the operating system (usually the C drive) becomes more than
85%
full, strange things begin to happen.
The Windows operating system uses the hard drive to
swap out files, hold things temporarily and deal with the moment to moment routines of the
operating system. To do this, at least 20% of the hard drive must remain available.
Once the hard drive has more than 80% space filled, the computer starts slowing
down dramatically and eventually will simply cease to run. Some
maintenance programs require a minimum of 15% of available space in order to
even work.
If you are working with large files - making CD's or
video CD's or DVD's - you can exceed 80% full with surprising ease. This may explain
why you can't make that CD but you can run another program. Even if a file is thrown
away - IT IS NOT OFF THE HARD DRIVE!
To avoid this there are several things you can do to
avoid the 80% full problem. The easiest thing to do is make sure you empty the
recycle bin. Right click on it, and click Empty Recycle Bin. When a file is
thrown away, it is sent to the recycle bin in case you really didn't mean to throw it
away. A good rule of thumb is to never empty the recycle bin until after you have
restarted the computer. That way, you can't have thrown out anything too important.
But remember, if it shows up in the recycle bin, it's still taking up space on the
hard drive.
The next thing to do is go through your programs and
see which ones you're no longer using. Games are huge programs, in general, and if
you do not use that game or only use it very rarely, then it probably should be
uninstalled. Application programs can be reinstalled relatively easily and as
mentioned if you are no longer using a program, it's best to simply uninstall it. Click
start, go to Settings, and click Control Panel. Click on Add/Remove Programs (Be
careful, the Add New Hardware option is right next to it). Find the programs you are
no longer using in the list and click add/remove. Then follow the above instructions again until every program
you are not using has been removed. Before you uninstall a program, however, make
sure you have the program disk to reinstall it if you choose to. It's impossible to
reinstall a program if you don't have its disk.
Next, go through your e-mail. Attachments, old
e-mails and other things can be archived and saved in a back-up (see the help files for
each e-mail program for how to do this) and e-mail files can take up significant amounts
of hard drive space f you get lots of pictures or other attachments. You might also check on compressing the e-mail folders (Again,
check the help files for each e-mail program to see how/if this is done). Getting
your e-mail sorted and archived can save a lot of space on your hard drive.
Next, back up your data and remove all old files.
Do you really need that letter you wrote last year? The one with the pictures
in it that takes up ten megabytes of hard drive space? Go through your files,
earmark the ones to be backed up by placing them into a special folder then back them all
up. (click here to see what files you should save and
generally how to back up data) THEN DELETE THEM ALL!
Finally, once you have restored your hard drive to
no more than 80% full (or less), then defragment your hard drive. Click here to see how.
(Note: Disk Clean-up is a routine part
of the defragmentation process and is not discussed here). Following the
defragmentation steps will complete the cleaning out the computer process and optimize
your hard drive.
There is always the option of buying a new, larger
hard drive to install, but most people don't know how to change the default directory when
installing programs. Installed programs almost always use more hard drive space than
personal data files. Music files, video files and some picture files (especially
from large megapixel cameras) can take large amounts of hard drive space and can all be
stored separately on a second disk drive. If your computer's hard drive is getting
full consistently, then it's time to think about adding a second hard drive or upgrading
your existing hard drive to a larger size (if possible). Consult the retailer from
which you purchased your computer or a computer professional regarding the feasibility of
upgrading your hard drive.
