How to clear your hard drive
We have all been there; our computer is creeping by like a bunch of senior citizens in their walkers towards Denny’s. The cause of this is often a lack of space on our hard drives, which as surprising as it is, can happen with a 160 GB hard drive.
Here are the best, easiest and quickest ways to clear your hard drive without having to purchase fancy cleaning tools like Norton Clean Sweep.
ADD/REMOVE PROGRAMS
Windows 2000 to XP
Before you go about deciding if you should empty your recycle bin or not, the best course of action is to use the Add/Remove Programs application in Control Panel to get rid of all those programs you bought or downloaded and used for a week. They may not take up much space themselves, but added together the applications can take up a sizable chunk of your hard drive. To get to the program, just go to your Control Panel and double click Add/Remove Programs. Once the window loads, you can look through the list of programs and choose what you want to keep and what you want to delete. If you choose to remove a program, click the change/remove button and a new window will open asking if you really want to remove the application. If you do, then proceed by clicking the appropriate button. Repeat this process for any programs you don’t need. IMPORTANT: If you do not know what the program is, do not remove it.
Windows Vista
Things are a little different when using Add/Remove Programs in Windows Vista. First, it is not called that anymore but just Programs. If you click on that in your control panel, it will bring up a window that has a series of icons in it. The one you need to be concerned with is Installed Programs. Once you double click it, you will see a list of your programs on your computer. Just click the program you want to remove, go to the File menu and choose Change/Remove.
That is all there is to it!
REMOVING UNNEEDED FILES THE EASY WAY!
Windows 2000 to XP
You may think you have to go to a bunch of different places to clear up space on your computer. Well think again. In fact, it is a very easy process to clear up space on your computer by using the Disk Cleanup tool provided by Windows.
To use this, go into My Computer and right click on your hard drive. Choose Properties and once the new window opens, click on Disk Cleanup. This application will scan the computer and find all the files you no longer need from your Recycle Bin, Temporary Internet Files, Downloaded Files and Office Setup Files.
Once the scan is complete, and it could take a few minutes, check what you want to delete and click OK.
That is all there is to it!
Windows Vista
The process with Windows Vista is quite similar to that of previous Windows versions. To get to Disk Cleanup, click the Start button, choose All Programs, then accessories, system tools and finally Disk Cleanup.
When the Disk Cleanup Options dialog box appears, choose whether you want to cleanup all the files on the computer or just your own, then select the drive you wish to clean and OK.
|
