TechDuke

I’ll bet you usually remember to clean your house occasionally. You do this cleaning so that your house doesn’t begin to fall into ruin. It’s a necessary part of life. Unfortunately, you might not remember to take the same care with your computer. However, it’s just as important. A clean and well organized computer will run faster, enable you to work faster, and have additional free hard drive space available when you need it. There are two things to get rid of: files and applications.

Get Rid of Unnecessary Files

You have tons of files you don’t need; delete them and free up some hard drive space.

Every time you create a document, copy a picture from your digital camera to your hard drive, download a music file, open and save an attachment in an e-mail, create a graphic, import video and create a movie, or work on a project, you’re saving data and files to your hard drive. These files accumulate, and if you never delete the files you no longer need, you’re probably wasting quite a bit of hard drive space. Not only that, but the computer must sift through all of these files when searching for data. Unnecessary files and data slow down the computer and take up valuable space on the hard drive.

Every now and then you should go through these files and delete what you no longer want. It’s a simple task, but one that takes time.

Getting rid of unnecessary files, no matter what they contain, is simple:

1. Click Start | My Computer.

2. Select the disk where data is stored. If there is only one choice, it is probably C:. If two or more choices are available, try D: or E:

3. Open the My Documents folder first. Locate any file you no longer need, right-click it, and click Delete. Verify that you want to perform this action by clicking Yes when prompted. You can also delete a selected folder by pressing DEL on your keyboard.

4. Click the Back button and select My Pictures. Locate any file you no longer need, right-click it, and click Delete. Verify that you want to perform this action by clicking Yes when prompted.

5. Click the Back button and select My Movies. Locate any file you no longer need, right-click it, and select Delete. Verify that you want to perform this action by clicking Yes when prompted.

6. Continue in this manner to clean out My Videos and data in any folders you’ve created.

In a few days, after you’re positive you don’t need anything you’ve deleted, empty the Recycle Bin. The files you deleted will be in there, and thus on your hard drive, until you delete them permanently

Even though deleting unnecessary files is a straightforward task, it is one often overlooked. Perform this task whenever you feel it’s necessary. For some this may be once a month, for others, once a year.

Free Your Computer of Unnecessary Programs

You have tons of programs you don’t need, and some you don’t even know you have; remove them for more power and hard drive space.

Okay, getting rid of unnecessary files may have seemed a little obvious, but I had to mention it because most people never do it. They just collect and collect and collect until the hard drive is so full that the computer owner figures the only way out is to purchase a new computer. People collect stuff besides the data that they create, though; they also collect programs and applications.

To see what programs are installed on your computer that you use rarely:

1. Open Control Panel from the Start menu or from the Desktop.

2. Open Add Or Remove Programs.

3. In the Add Or Remove Programs window, in the Sort By drop-down list, choose Frequency Of Use.

4. Take a look at all of the programs that are used “Rarely.” Decide what you can remove. A good rule of thumb is the one-year rule. If you haven’t used the program in a year, delete it. To every rule of thumb there’s an exception, so be sure you don’t kill a program you rarely use but may need later.

To remove any program in the list, click Change/Remove. Follow the prompts to remove the program. Once you’ve deleted everything you need to, use Disk Cleanup and Disk Defragmenter, as detailed later in this chapter, to help reorganize the items still stored on your hard disk.