How do i clean up my computer hard drive

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Author Message   joshua Frances (Joshua) Posted on Tuesday, February 04, 2003 - 04:30 pm:    i know there are a few differnt things i can do, i just dont know what or how to do them I would imagine, after a year or so of surfing different websites, there is a lot of junk on the hd I do infact do the disc cleanup every week, but where is the hidden crap, that slows me down? Thanks gurus joshua   Dean Brown (Deanbrown3d) Posted on Tuesday, February 04, 2003 - 04:43 pm:    Internet Explorer | Tools | Internet Options | General | Delete Files Empty recycle bin Disk defrag Uninstall unused programs Search for *.* on your hard drives, and sort by size. There may be some very large temporary or otherwise useless info files that you can delete. Buy a 120GB HD for little $$$ Hope this is a start Dean   Al Oliveira (Offroaddisco) Posted on Tuesday, February 04, 2003 - 04:55 pm:    Depending on the version of Windows you're using you'll actually need to drop into DOS to remove many of the hidden files. You can't just do a 'show all hidden files' in explorer. IE, Outlook and Findfast all create hidden .DAT files that store more than you may want. http://netsecurity.about.com/library/weekly/aa020402a.htm Just another reason to not use these programs and use something open source.   joshua Frances (Joshua) Posted on Tuesday, February 04, 2003 - 04:56 pm:    Dean, thanks I do have a 120 gig hd, lol thanks for the help though, anyone else got any tricks?   Michael Noe (Noee) Posted on Tuesday, February 04, 2003 - 06:13 pm:    This can also be useful, though from a different perspective: Visual Disk Viewer   John Davies Posted on Tuesday, February 04, 2003 - 06:52 pm:    Here's the stuff I delete routinely from my Windows XP pc (depending on your operating system, you may have to look elsewhere for all this). The easiest way to keep track of these is to create a new folder (mine is called "Clean Cookies") and place shortcuts to all these folders in it. Then place a shortcut to the new folder in your taskbar. Keep in mind with XP that each user has a sperate set of folders - you need to link to EVERY user's data to get rid of all the stuff. C:\Documents and Settings\(user name)\Cookies C:\Documents and Settings\(user name)\Local Settings\Temp C:\Documents and Settings\(user name)\Local Settings\Temporary Internet Files C:\Documents and Settings\(user name)\Application Data\Real\RealOne Player\History C:\Windows\Prefetch I believe that the Recycle Bins have to be emptied manually while logged in as the user. In other words, if you have 4 users, then you have to log in 4 times to empty them all. If someone knows an easier way to do this, please tell me. I use a freeware program called Ad Aware 5.0 to remove spyware. You can get it here: http://download.com.com/3000-2094-10045910.html   John Davies Posted on Tuesday, February 04, 2003 - 06:56 pm:    I forgot one other thing - in IE, go to Internet Options/Content/AutoComplete/ Click "Clear Forms" and "Clear Passwords" to clear all the stuff from your drop-down menues.   Al Oliveira (Offroaddisco) Posted on Tuesday, February 04, 2003 - 07:33 pm:    older Micro$oft OS's had a really good tool... C:\deltree /y Kids, don't try that one at home.   Al Oliveira (Offroaddisco) Posted on Tuesday, February 04, 2003 - 07:42 pm:    Also, I notice that everyone here points to IE as a place that stores files... but if you use Outlook, chances are that you have copies of your email stored on your computer that you may not even know exists. You may want to clear that out too.   Brad Russell (Bradnc) Posted on Tuesday, February 04, 2003 - 10:02 pm:    For the less experience computer user, Norton Systemworks is a very usefull tool that is basically just clicking. Download a pirated version off of your favorite peer to peer network and you're good to go....hehe   Dan Posted on Wednesday, February 05, 2003 - 07:47 am:    I use a program called Window Washer from http://www.webroot.com could most likly find it on a p2p program.