Cleaning Up Hard Drives

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Hard drives are pretty large these days, but there are times when you just want to clean them up and get rid of some of the junk. Here are a few ways that you free up some space and possible even improve performance.

Removing Applications

Repeat for each application you want to remove

1. Click Start\Control Panel\All Control Panel Items\Programs and Features
2. Select an application that you do not want on your system
3. Click [Uninstall]

Using the Disk Cleanup Utility

1. Click Start\All Programs\Accessories\System Tools\Disk Cleanup
2. Click the "More Options" tab
3. Click [Clean up...] under
4. System Restore and Shadow Copies
5. Click [Delete]
6. Click the "Disk Cleanup" tab
7. Select the appropriate areas (I generally choose everything except "Thumbnails")
8. Click the [OK] button
9. Click the [Delete Files] button

Remove the hibernation file

1. Open a command prompt as Administrator
2. Type "powercfg -H off" (You will need to use "powercfg -H on" to restore it)

Defrag and consolidate free space

Recent versions of Windows actually do this in the background, but sometimes you just want to force it.

1. Open a command prompt as Administrator
2. Type "defrag C: /H /U /V"
3. Type "defrag C: /X"