Hard Disk Clean-up
and how to wipe you drive completely (see at the end)
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This page is not for the novice or the faint hearted. Suggestions here can be very damaging to the health of your PC and the usual precautions should be taken to note what you have done, make backups and Restore points and don't blame the author!
Wot, no space left ?
If you are getting short of hard disk space, and have broadband, you may wish to consider using free on line storage. There are a number of advantages, not least that it would still be there even if your computer crashed completely ! See HERE for a list of such facilities.
Bear in mind that the things that take most space are VIDEOS, MUSIC, SOPHISTICATED GAMES and GRAPHICS (photographs) These days with cameras taking snaps that are 2 -4 megabytes a piece, even your Pictures folder can rapidly become over-inflated. These days, very large USB 'Flash' drives can be bought so that one can copy the contents of large folders to them and delete the files from the hard disk. Alternatively one can copy material to DVDs, which each take at least 4Gb of files. Even if your photographs are 4Mb each (quite likely these days), one of these DVD can contain 1000. So, if your hard disk crashes one day, you will still have your precious photos.
Backing up a PC in case of disaster
As
a very minimum one should have a Rescue disk for Windows. If you
did not receive one with your machine it is as well to make one. In
Windows 7 go to the Control Panel, System Security,Backup and Restore.
Put a blank disk in the drive and click Create System Repair
disk. Mark it and put it in a safe place.
In
the same area you will see that Windows 7 and later have their own
backup programs. or type the word Backup at the Start to find this.
But if you require a versatile free backup program, DriveImage XML is a free downloadable program. It is only 1.6Mb. It can be set to backup sections of your computer at regular intervals or it can create a mirror image of your Operating System, drivers, user settings, software applications and documents. It is usually set to back them up to a DVD, CD or an external hard drive. See HERE for a description. Yet another, favoured by guru Leo, is Macrium Free. See Leo's excellent video on using this https://askleo.com/create-backup-image This is more than just a regular file backup but a whole, restorable System, including Windows itself. He particularly suggests that you should do a complete image backup before upgrading to Windows 10 (in case you need to go back)
I am getting increasing numbers of enquiries about PC's going slower. Generally it is NOT because of all the files and programs you have on the hard disk (unless it is nearly full) For information about Speeding You PC see Here
These days hard disks can be enormous. So, what if certain applications use a percentage of your disk space ? In fact there are several Windows components that, by default, create needlessly huge temp file areas: e.g. System Restore, Recycle Bin, and Internet Explorer. (in fact ALL the browsers make large temporary files) A program such as Piriform's Ccleaner makes it easy to get rid of temporary files.
System Restore can be an incredible space hog. That might be OK if System Restore were a truly complete and foolproof form of backup, but it's not. At best, System Restore may get the core operating system running again after a bad crash, but it doesn't return all files to the pre-trouble state, and it can't remove all traces of a program that went bad. Because it's such a limited recovery tool, I don't feel it's worthwhile to devote vast amounts of disk space to it. Here's how it can be tamed: In XP right-click on My Computer, select Properties, and select the System Restore tab. Then select your main drive (usually C:), click Settings, and move the slider to reserve a reasonable amount of disk space. In Windows 7 the procedure is similar. Right click Computer (in the Start list), click Properties, then System Protection and then Configure.
Recycle Bin and Internet Explorer are also voracious: Each reserves 10% of your hard drive for its own use. That's a large chunk of your entire hard drive just for these two items! On today's large drives, the amount of space wasted is absurd. Worse, over time those huge reserved areas can accumulate an incredible number of junk files, many of which Windows will try to track either at startup or as the OS runs. You can gain space and maybe also speed up your system by taming these disk-hungry programs: Right click on the Recycle Bin, select Properties, and on the Global tab, decide how much space you want the Recycle Bin to consume, either for all drives in your system, or on a per-drive basis. I adjust the slider way to the left. On a large drive, it still reserves a few hundred megabytes of space for recoverable trash, which should be plenty.
Similarly, open Internet Explorer, and select Tools, Internet Options. Under Temporary Internet Files, click the Settings button and select a reasonable size for this 'cache' area. Generally speaking, if you have a fast connection, 5 MB to 10 MB is adequate; 25 MB or so is usually enough with a slower connection. In fact I set my machine to clear Temporary Internet Files each time I exit the browser. (See Internet Explorer Tools, Advanced, Security)
Doing the above can remove as much as 3 GB of junk files from your system, a worthy result in itself, but this may not result in any major speed gain
From the
correspondence I receive I know that some people are anxious to keep
their PC nice and
clean.
They may want to create some space or are interested to see what
rubbish
has accumulated on it - usually as a result of program installations.
It
isn't just about being tidy, because unless a machine has quite a
lot
of spare space it cannot function properly. This is because it
often
needs temporary hard disk space for one reason or another. So, if you
are
down to less than 100Mb space you should start to be concerned. One
commercial program, System Mechanic from
www.iolo.com, does quite a deep
clean. It starts with the usual frightening analysis of your hard
drive.
This gives you several 'warnings' about the number of irrelevant things
in
your register, broken links, security flaws, unnecessary programs in
Startup,
fragmentation and wasted space. These warnings are standard practice
for
all such programs. Useful, but they must also help their sales no
end
! But in this case I decided to buy it. It really does have an
infinite number of tools to
check out your machine and I do recommend it, despite it
looking like 'Scareware'. Alternatively one
can download Ccleaner from
www.piriform.com. It is free but
there is a paid
version. It is regularly updated
and is very
straightforward to use and relatively safe.
Cleaning
up the hard disk
To start with you
should
check how much hard disk space you are
using
and how much is still free.This is done be clicking My Computer,
right
clicking your drive (C:) and clicking Properties in the Menu that
appears.
If there appears to be just a small empty segment left you really
need
to do something about it. You will notice that there is a box which
says
Disk Cleanup. Click on this. It shows a list of non essential
files
such as Temporary files and allows you to clear them. It will also
empty
your Recycle bin.Temporary
Internet
Files are
designed to make browsing for
repeated
websites quicker. They are unnecessary and, if you browse the net
a
lot, can accumulate very rapidly. You can also clear them by right
clicking
the Internet Explorer icon on the desktop, clicking Properties and
clicking
Delete Files on the screen that is displayed. You can also
delete
Cookies but these are small files that keep a (confidential)
record
of things like passwords. However, Cookies are also where most Adware
and
Spyware files are kept, so you might like to clear these too.
Even after deleting
Temporary Internet Files by the normal method it
tends
to leave some files. A more thorough way is by using the free
program
Ccleaner. It is even possible to clear Temporary Internet Files
each
time you close Internet Explorer. (See Internet Explorer, Tools,
Advanced,
Security)
Sometimes I search
for
files
which were over 3000 kb (3
megabytes). There can be dozens, often videos made with a webcam or
phone.
A video of this kind can easily run to 50 megabytes or more. After
consulting with the owner of one machine they agreed that they
were mostly rubbish being created by their young children messing about
and
pulling faces ! Deleting them released a third of their hard disk! If
you
do wish to keep videos or music on a PC a small hard disk is just not
suitable.
You could fit another hard disk inside a desktop PC (if there is
space) or attach
an external one via a USB
cable. Then transfer all videos,
music and large photos to that, recovering the space on the principal
hard disk.
Modern digital cameras
are
sold
on the basis of how many megapixels
they
can use. Although you can reduce this most people don't and the
resultant
2 to 5 Mb photos soon fill Gigabytes of space. There are simple ways to
reduce
these, especially if they are unimportant pictures. See my page on
Picasa and look for Export in the
facilities
it
provides. Picasa also has a powerful ( and trustworthy) duplicate
finder.
Another possibility is to look at Add and
Remove
programs
and
get rid
of things which you are CERTAIN you don't need e.g. old games.
Also you may find that
some updates are absolutely massive. For instance I just looked at my
Java
updates in Add/remove. Essential of course as some are about
security
weaknesses. But 300 Mb !!!! in two updates. So I looked to
the
net for advice and this is what was said.
Your machine wont come to harm without Java but many fancy
frills
on websites are now written in Javascript and wouldn't function if you
don't
have Java installed
But, more recently, Java has become a honeypot for malware and
many people have blocked it. In my case, I still have the program
but only allow it to operate when a graphic calls for it.
But, if you find multiple Java entries the
best way is to uninstall them all then
reinstall the most recent
version.nbsp;Assuming that you are
in the Administrator account, go to Control Panel, Add/Remove Programs
and
uninstall everything that says J2SE, Java and Java Runtime. Reboot
(some
computers require a reboot to complete the uninstall process). Then go
to
the site below and download the most recent version of Java.
http://www.java.com/en/download/chrome.jsp?locale=en
Having considered all these ideas you may
wish to
search
for
other less
important files.The following files are NOT essential
to
the
running of
Windows but might be important to you for other reasons.
After
all, the Help files can be very useful and you will probably
prefer
to keep them. In the following list the star (*)
represents
the file name. The extension e.g. 'tmp' indicates the file type
: *.hlp (help) *.zip
& *.cab
(compressed)*.swf *.wmv *.avi
*.mov
*. mpg (video) *.wma *.wav *.mid
*.mp3, *.mp4, *.rmi (sounds) *.jpg *.gif
*.bmp
*.pcx (graphics) *.txt (text files)
*.tmp (temporary)
*.old
*.bak
(backups
of other files) *.fot *.fon *.grp (old files left
over
from earlier Windows) *.chk (old Scandisk backups) and
files
starting in "~"(often Word documents) . All of this
last
group can be deleted without doubt.
Do be careful when deleting files. Be sure to put them in the
Recycle
Bin for a while so you can restore them if necessary.
If,
next time you switch on your machine, it says it can't find something,
make
a note of it and restore it immediately.
Finding
the files.
If
you go
to Start,
Find/Search, Files and Folders and type in - say - *.tmp (that is
Star,
dot, TMP)- providing you have set 'Look in C:' you will be able to see
a
list of which *.tmp files are there and where they are. If you
right
click on them and click Delete they will go to the Recycle Bin.
It
is a good idea to clear the Bin before you start, so all the new
deletions
are obvious.
Using an Uninstaller There
are
a
number of
proprietary Undelete programs such as Revo or
Ccleaner (which also has a Registry Cleaner).
If there are programs which you are sure that you are not going to use
you can either compress them using Winzip or delete them by going to
Start,
Settings, Control Panel, Add and Remove Programs.(or
Programs and Features). This
will ensure that (most of) the extra bits that are scattered around
various3072 x 2304
directories are deleted also, although Add and Remove is by no means
perfect
and it can leave whole folders and Shortcuts hanging around.
Alternatively
you may see an Uninstall program associated with the program. If
you just delete the folder in which a program has its main files you
are
almost certain to leave a residue of DLL files in the Windows or
Windows/System
folder and you will not know which are important at a later date.
These
are called 'Orphan Files' and may be located by an uninstaller. More
recently I have found the the Iobit
Uninstaller
not only tries to find the associated uninstaller but then lists which
associated files might be deleted. You can normally agree to
this without worries.
Did you< know that Windows loads every font you have in the Fonts folder when it starts up? The more you have, the longer it takes (and the more memory is tied up). So take a look in your Fonts folder and keep only those you really like and use. However, be careful not to remove fonts that have a red letter icon as these are System fonts.
Windows
comes with a
load of
fonts and most of us use Times New
Roman
in Bold and Italic and maybe Arial, too. Some programs add even more
fonts
to this list. If you are into desktop publishing you might need a
few
special ones. Just how much space do these fonts take on your
hard
disk? The Font folder on a Windows 7 PC amounts to 370Mb. Be
careful if you decide to delete fonts as some are 'system fonts' which
may affect the appearance of what you see on screen. So, if you are
nervous about this, create a folder
called Oldfonts and move them to that for a while. Leave some of
the basic ones such as Courier.
My Documents.
One of the most
difficult
areas to tackle is your accumulation of word processed documents.
This
folder can also get full of downloaded pictures. One technique I
use
is to go for the really BIG files, which are usually those containing
graphics.
Using Windows Explorer I click on (My) Documents. I then
click
on View, Details. This shows the size of the files in kilobytes.
You
can click at the top of the Size column to put them in Size Order. Some
of
mine were over 4 megabytes in size ! I look at them (click
on
them) before deciding which have to go. It is even possible to open a
range
of word processed files, check them over, then close them, noting which
are
to be scrapped. Most word processors allow you to right click a
file
and click delete. Incidentally the contents of the (My) Documents
folder (and
sub folders) are not lost when you do a Restore, so you need
not worry that you would lost recent documents of photographs.
The Recycle Bin
You can set the percentage of the hard disk set aside for the Recycle Bin (right click it and click Properties). Although this means that emptying the bin may not give you as much space as you expected the bin should be cleared periodically. It can get to be very unwieldy. If you wish to put the files in the bin in size order you can use View, Arrange icons, By size (smallest at the top). Or you can select a group by file type in this way or even Date of Deletion, if you only want to delete ones you have sent to the Bin some time ago. You can Delete or Restore individual items (or a group) from the Bin by right clicking them. You can use the technique of clicking the first, holding down the Shift key and clicking the last, if you wish to delete a whole list. Once deleted from the Bin the only way to get them back is by using special undeletion software, such as Piriform Recuva. And this must be done urgently, before the space they use is overwritten.
Do not remove *.vxd, *.inf, *.sys, *.ini, *.dll , *.com, *.dat or *.exe files unless you know what you are doing
Other files to consider deleting: *.scr (screensavers), *.cur(cursors).. Whilst some help files may be important to you. I found 242 of them, amounting to 30Mb! Most of them are never used. Some are in Korean and Chinese !
*.zip files. Once they are unzipped, they do not need to stay on the hard drive. Use "Find" to find them all. But don't delete the ones you have made to keep your compressed files
And of course, when everything is working alright don't forget to defrag as a final cleanup. Defrag may tell you that it is not necessary but do it anyway. Leave yourself plenty of time for this job. Close down your screensaver and all programs (except Windows and Explorer) with Ctl+Alt+Del before you start or start the machine in Safe Mode to do this. Defrag will work much faster. If you find that Defrag never gets past 10% it means that something is happening in the background. You can try a program such as Powerdefrag or Piriform Defraggler to get over this.
See next page to Manually Install the Backup Utility See next page Best of luck with your hard disk cleanup. If you are not happy about it. If there is space inside your computer get an additional hard disk instead ! Backup things which you think are important. Keep things in the Recycle Bin until you are sure EVERY program is working satisfactorily. At least a month. If you have problems you can e-mail me but everything you do is YOUR responsibility If you really want to start from scratch, reformat the drive. But it is a big job. See HERE. But, if you really want to wipe your drive completely, perhaps before recycling it. See Wikipedia on DBAN. (DBAN is a Linux based boot disk which really wipes your drive.)
To completely clear the hard disk - before disposing of it - download free software from https://cmrr.ucsd.edu/resources/secure-erase.html
Once you have done that NO-ONE will be able to see what was there.
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