Many people don’t know how much faster their system can run with a few simple clean up tasks. You should be able to get rid of a lot of ‘junk’ files stored on your computer by doing the following safe tasks:
Cleaning Cookies: Cookies are small bits of file left over after you’ve visited a website. They can safely be removed by going to Start>Control Panel>Internet Options. Now click to delete cookies and browsing history.
Disk Clean-Up: Disk Clean-Up will free up a lot of space on your computer. It’s a pretty smart little tool that finds the useless files on your computer and gets rid of them. You can access Disk Clean-Up by going to Start>Control Panel>System and Maintenance>Administrative Tools and then click on free up disk space. When the box comes up after your computer is scanned for files, click the small boxes beside all available files to be cleaned and start the clean up. This may take a couple of minutes, depending on when it was last done.
Disk Defrag: You can access Disk Defragment in the same place you found Disk Clean-Up. Follow the prompts on the screen when you begin running defrag. Disk Defragmentation works by clumping all like files together. It helps free up disk space and helps your computer run a little faster. It will also get rid of files that were left behind after deleting some programs.
Remove Spyware, Malware, and Adware: Spyware and Adware can invade your computer from any unsecured site. You can rid your computer of malware, adware, and spyware by searching online for a spyware remover like System Optimizer Pro. There are many of these available for free that will work great. Download and install the program and let it do a full scan to remove any suspicious files.
Remove unwanted programs: In the Control Panel, click on Add or Remove Programs (some versions of Windows may say Uninstall a program). Go down the list and uninstall any programs you don’t use anymore.
After completing these steps, you should have removed most of the unnecessary files from your computer. You can also go into ‘My Computer’ and go through picture and music files, deleting any you don’t need or want anymore. You can also delete the sample background pictures that Windows comes with, if you don’t use them. You could also burn these to a disc so that you may keep them but they won’t clutter up your computer. MP3 files can take up a lot of space if you have many stored on your computer.
When you’re all done, make sure to empty your recycle bin and restart your computer. Restarting insures that everything will uninstall correctly. You may not notice the effects of the cleaning until you have restarted.
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