Nothing slows your computer down more than overloading your hard drive with a bunch of files. Just because you may not think you are saving or creating a lot files does not necessarily mean that you aren't. Every time you boot up your machine, go on the internet or run a program, small files are created to keep track of what that software is doing, or cookies on the internet so when you go to the website again it loads faster for you.
You probably have a ton of files sitting right now on your PC from surfing the internet that you didn't even know existed. Help speed up your computer by cleaning those files out. There are a couple of options here for you if you are running a Windows based PC.
Start by going to your internet options first. You can get there by Clicking on “Start” then “Settings” then “Control Panel” and then finally double clicking “Internet Options” from the control panel list.
On the “General” you will see the option “Delete” under the heading “Browser history”. Clicking that button will permanently delete all of the files in your temporary internet directory.
On this tab you can also erase your cookies as well. That is entirely up to you. Ok so that gives you a start but it is not the be all end all of cleaning up your computer. Windows provides a nice utility called Disk Cleanup. To run this program, click on “Start”, then click on “Program Files” (or “All Programs” depending on the version of windows you are running, then click on “Accessories”, then “System Tools” and finally click on “Disk Cleanup”.
If you have multiple hard drives you will be asked which hard drive you want to clean up. The default is normal your “C” drive. Choose your “C” drive for now and click on “Ok”. The system will begin analyzing your computer. It may take a while depending on the size of your hard drive and how “messy” it is.
Once your computer has finished analyzing your hard drive a window will pop up giving you information on what should be done in order to free up space and clean up your computer. The computer's recommendations should be checked and is normally enough to go by. Click the “Ok” button and the clean up process will begin.
Again depending on the size of your hard drive, speed of your computer and other factors this could take a while. Once it is complete, you will have cleaned your hard drive up nicely.
If you do not see an increase in your machines performance you may need to run disk defrag to optimize your hard drive. You can learn more about disk defrag in my other article.
