You just picked up the latest issue of PC World that has a DVD full of trial software, games and shareware stuff. Then you learn about a software that can "predict future" and install it the same day. Well, there's no harm in installing or trying out new software, the problem is that they occupy tons of space on your computer's hard drive and there are fair chances that you won't ever run these "shareware software".
And not just software, you computer drive is clogged with temp files, duplicate mp3 and images, software installation logs, movie files that are saved at multiple places, etc, etc.
So wear your aprons and get ready to spring clean your PC. All you need are free software and some spare time but the advantage is you will notice speed enhancement and there's more space now to store important stuff.
Step 1: Find and Delete Duplicate MP3 Songs, Photographs, Office Documents and Videos
Believe it or not, we all have tons of duplicate data on our computers - it may be residing in separate folders or other hard drive partitions. Duplicate Cleaner and Duplicate File Finder are small freeware programs that help you delete duplicate files on your PC. They will scan the folders and let you decide which files you want to delete.
[Take great care while deleting files with DLL, INF or OCX extension. If not sure, leave them as such]
Step 2: Clean Browser files, Traces of other programs
Over time, you computer is stuffed with temporary files, logs, invalid document shortcuts, Windows Hotfix installers, prefetch data and so one. While most of these files are small in size, they quickly add up to occupy reasonable amount of space on your PC. CCleaner is an excellent freeware utility that cleans up everything useless from your PC. It can even delete the index.dat files of IE which has secrets about your browing history.
CCleaner also cleans up your Windows registry and temp files created by software like Adobe Photoshop, Windows Media Player, Microsoft Office and other software. Highly recommended.
Step 3: Remove Windows Programs that you never use
Start Add/Remove Program from the Windows Control Panel and remove all the software programs that you haven't touch in the past three months. This could include games, shareware utilities or even licensed software for you have which the installation CDs.
Once you are done performing the above steps, it may be time to defrag your hard disk to further boost the performance. Happy cleaning!
Related: When You Run Out of Space on C: Drive..
Reader Comments
Amit,
As a loyal reader I have to let you know that DI is beginning to get slightly boring off late. There's a whole wide world of PC technology out there but you seem to be focussing heavily on articles that deal directly or indirectly with generating blog revenue... Adsense, Google spiders, Blog rankings... you know what I mean.
Though these topics are of value to bloggers I have never considered DI as just a "blog for bloggers."
I admit you have been covering other stuff too but as a non-blogger (and I expect a huge chunk of your regular readers are non-bloggers) I find a lot of your recent posts of little interest. If this is intentional then there's nothing left for me to say but if not a slight course-correction would be in order. Thanks.
Written on 13/1/07 1:16 AM
I am all about a clean machine...free of all the garbage...but I think it is also a good idea to know exactly what services are running...this is about the time to say "Proceed At Your Own Risk"...hehe...but Process Explorer is just such an app that will show you all the information you need to know about what services are running and the performance of your PC. You can download it from Microsoft and it seems to be Vista ready. Cool tool...check it out:
Process Explorer
Written on 13/1/07 9:30 AM
Duplicate file finder is a good utility but I wonder if it checks both the files are indeed same or just the names. It may so happen that multiple files have same name but they are updated than each other. How does it check for that?
I don't have a habit of very regular backup but before anything strikes hard on me, I am planning to start backing up and I thought of the exactly same issue. How do you know both files are indeed same and NOT just by the name?
Could you please cover something on data backups as well? In fact, there is quite a lot of information available on the web but I am yet to find very newbie information. I don't have multiple HDDs so I can't make 50GB backups every month and keep them aside without over writing. I hope I am getting to the point in this rant.
Written on 13/1/07 10:41 AM
Hi Amit, I blogged about a similar hack you can perform to transfer your special folders (eg:my documents, cd burner cache etc) to another drive of your choice so that your system drive remains free of cluttered data. Perhaps you can take a peak at it :) I think, the process I discussed about is quite simple as well as without any side-effects
Written on 13/1/07 4:16 PM
I also want to second the Anon's (3rd) comment. Can you talk more about duplicate file remover works? Does it check for file names, size, or does it match the content bit by bit? -Ashish
Written on 14/1/07 4:58 AM
Well...after seeing a few of you guys asking about "Duplicate File Finder"...I decided to go get that app myself. I also took the time to go to the developers site (here)and when I saw the NOTE he put:
WARNING: Do not delete files if you do not know what they are! It is NOT recommended that you search your system directory and delete all the duplicate files it contains; since your operating system may need those files!
I realized that where this program will find the duplicate files and compare them bit by bit, which took awhile on both modes fast/normal, the files found were actually the same size and all...in different directories and so on.
I looked at a few of the dll's that specifically had a duplicate in the system directory and elsewhere. In comparing the version info on the DLL's it was clear that they were fairly similar, but after downloading listdlls from a handy site at Microsoft (Sysinternals Tools/Utilities has some good tools...check it out!) I found that the paths of the dlls was registered differently. So albeit they are the same size...and had similar info...the registrations paths in the registry were in fact different and thus you may, in some circumstances, run into some issues with those programs that are looking for a dll one might have deleted. Take caution and by all means verify those DLLs specifically if they come up for deletion...personally I usually won't touch a DLL, won't delete it, as for one they do not take up much space and I just don't want the headache of problems down the road. I guess the same can be said for all files...but DLLs specifically.
As for the other files...well...if it isn't a .tmp, .chk, .dmp, or any picture extension...I would google it to find exactly what it was before sending it to oblivion. Be careful with some of these duplicate file finders...without user caution they can make your life miserable.
Sorry for the rant!
Written on 15/1/07 1:19 AM
This is for anonymous...regarding backups. Seeing that you don't have multiple hard drives...do you have a CD or DVD writer? If so, most of the burners will usually come with software that will have some CD back up functionality...whether it is "in-house" or commercially available (i.e. Nero, Roxio EZCD, etc...).
Now if you have a burner but no real backup solution with it...there is a freeware piece of software that has been out awhile and I have used it alot with work and when working on other peoples PC's called, Simply Safe Backup. You can download it here! Like I said...it has been out awhile and the beauty of it is...it will fully support backing up multi-session CDs or DVDs...so you won't waist alot of discs if you do frequent backups. You can also backup across the network with this application. At least check it out and judge for yourself.
Written on 15/1/07 1:41 AM
Duplicate Cleaner deep scans the contents of the file -it doesn't look at file names. It also looks at the ID3 tags of Mp3's, OGG's, etc.
Written on 25/1/07 3:12 PM