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Computer Help FAQ

Cleanup The Hard Drive

10 years ago

Win98 and WinME

1. Disk Clean Up
Click 'Start' >'Programs' >'Accessories' >'System Tools' >'Disk Cleanup'.
Select the drive you wish to clean and click "OK".
Select desired Options.
Click

2. Clean Cookies, Temporary Folders, Temporary Internet Files and History
From the Desktop, open 'My Computer' >C Drive >Windows >Cookies
Select all files..right click and select "Delete".
Return to the Windows folder.
Scroll to and open the 'Temp' folder.
From the toolbar at the top of the window, click "Tools">Viewing Options.
Check to insure that "Show All Files" is selected.
Select all the files within the "Temp" folder and delete them.
Return to the Windows folder.
Locate and open the 'Temporary Internet Files' folder.
Select all files within the "Temporary Internet Files" folder, right
click and select "Delete".
Return to the Windows directory.
Locate the "History" folder.
Select all files within and delete.
Return to the C Drive directory.
Locate the "Temp" folder.
Open it and delete all files within. 3. Remove Unwanted or Unused Programs
To view programs installed on your computer,
click 'Start' >Control Panel >Add/Remove Programs.
To remove a program, select and click the 'Add/Remove' button.
After uninstalling a program, you should re-start the computer.
If you are going to uninstall more than one program,
re-start the computer after each is removed.

4. Scan Disk
It is a good idea to shut-down your Antivirus program prior to running
Scandisk and Defrag.
Click Start>Programs>Accessories>System Tools>Scan Disk.
Select a drive to scan. You will notice an option to perform a "Thorough'
scan.
Unless you are having issues with the hard drive, it is not necessary to do a
'thorough' scan.
A 'thorough' scan can take a great deal of time to complete, whereas a
'Normal' scan does not.
Select "Convert fragmented files to freespace".
Click OK.
Remember...you cannot do anything else on the computer while running
Scandisk.

5. Defrag
You should run Defragmenter after running Scandisk.
Click 'Start' >Programs>Accessories>System Tools> Defragmenter.

Select the drive and click 'Defragment'.
Restart the Computer upon completion.

Remember... you cannot do anything else on the computer while running Defrag.

Comment

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Is a hard drive upgrade in order?
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Comments (8)
the thing I am worried about is the fact you said it Sounds old if this sound is coming from the tower it could well be coming from the hard drive and if a hard drive is making sounds it did not make when new it can be an indicator of a drive that is on it's way to failing. I would try running some of the programs that test the health of your hard drive and see what you get. I am sure you did not mean 2Mb of Ram perhaps 2 Gig? Hard drives are not terribly expensive and they are pretty easy to install, just depends really on what you want to put into an older machine. It would be an excellent candidate to load linux on and learn a new OS. But first you need to learn of the health of that drive and definitely do housekeeping on it no matter what you do. When was the last time you opened that case and cleaned out the dust bunnies? Dust bunnies can often be the reason things fail due to the heat caused and them getting stuck in fans which makes new noises too. Cleaning the computer and its components belarc has a hard drive health test Belarc HD Tune look for the free version not the pro
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OK we need to step back a little. You did not mention your operating system nor the program you use to create your back up image. If you have Vista or Windows 7 it comes with a back up utility. XP does not so you need a third party program such as Acronis True Image or similar. From what I can see you external drive came with no back up program installed on it. Using your HP recovery disks will return the computer to the state it was when you first opened the box and set your machine up. All data will be lost unless it is backed up. All bloatware will be installed again, exactly as it left the factory. Restoring an image created in Vista, Win7 or third party software however returns the computer to the exact state it was in when you created that particular image. Some (perhaps all) programs offer incremental backups, in other words they add stuff onto the previous back up. Personally I never allow that, I always create a new image then delete the older one. There is no specific reason for that, it is just one of my many quirks.
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More memory is good but at some point there is a diminishing return on the investment and that point is a function of what you are doing with your computer. Things like first person shooter games, video editing, photo editing (of very large files) all benefit from lots of memory. Writing an email to Aunt Betty doesn't require very much memory at all because the computer can process information far faster than you can type. Same thing for the Internet, your computer can render pages faster than your connection can supply the information. So if you have a slow internet connection, you're not likely to experience much, if any improvement. With that said, 4 gigs is probably a pretty good number. If you really want a WOW factor, get a solid state drive and use that for your O/S and critical applications. To try and answer some of your questions: - Windows doesn't care about the physical drive or any logical partitions. It does make good sense to install Windows 7 on the newer, faster drive. You'll get the best performance that way. When it comes time to get rid of XP, everything will be on one drive and that, if nothing else, should help you keep things mentally organized. - My understanding is that you have two physical drives, one with a functioning version of XP and the other blank. If that is not correct, say so NOW. - When you go to install Windows 7, it will recognize that there is another operating system (Windows XP) already installed. Windows 7 won't do anything to XP other than to set up the dual boot. Essentially it's computer language that says, "XP is there, Windows 7 is here, which one do you want to use?" - Logical partitions to a drive a largely a function of personal preference. Understand that it is more difficult (but not impossible) to non-destructively repartition a drive after you put data on it. If you, for example, have a partition for music, another for videos, and a third for pictures and find down the road that you have a lot more videos than music, it becomes more difficult to rearrange things. My suggestion is a single, large partition and use folders to organize your data.
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I love to reset browsers to default when they get sluggish. In Chrome, it's under advanced settings. Warning, this will remove all of your plugins and extensions. Take this advice with a grain of salt. I once had someone really freak out after resetting Firefox because he had to reset his home page and add his extensions back. Don't forget to delete IE browser cache, even if you don't use it. Windows does use IE and stores temp files there. Speaking of temp files, before you defragment, clear out your Windows Temp files. Click start, type in run and press enter. Now type in %temp% and press enter. There shouldn't be anything in here that you need and you might be surprised at how much has built up in there.
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