How to do a Disk Cleanup

Disk Cleanup helps free up space on your hard drive. Disk Cleanup searches your drive, and then shows you temporary files, Internet cache files, and unnecessary program files that you can safely delete. You can direct Disk Cleanup to delete some or all of those files.

Removing unneeded files: When running an operating system as complex as Windows, you may not always know the significance of all the files on your computer. Sometimes Windows uses files for a specific purpose and then retains them in a folder designated for temporary files. Alternatively, you may have previously installed Windows components that you are no longer using. For a variety of reasons, including running out of space on your hard drive, you may want to reduce the number of files on your disk, or create more free space, if it can be done without harming any of your programs.

Use the Windows Disk Cleanup Wizard to perform all of the following tasks to clear space on your hard disk:

• Remove temporary Internet files.
• Remove any downloaded program files (ActiveX controls and Java applets downloaded from the Internet).
• Empty the Recycle Bin.
• Remove Windows temporary files.
• Remove Windows components that you are not using.
• Remove installed programs that you no longer use.

To be more efficient, conduct a Disk Defrag after running the Disk Cleanup program. CLICK HERE to see how!

To start Disk Cleanup, you can use either of the following two methods:

Method 1: Click the Start Button, choose RUN. Type in the following: cleanmgr and CLICK OK

OR....

Method 2: Click the START button, Choose Programs, Choose Accessories, Choose System Tools and CLICK Disk Cleanup.

Using either method, the Select Drive window will appear. Select "C" which is your hard drive. CLICK OK.

The Disk Cleanup Wizard will start to calculate how much space it can make available.

After the calculation, the Disk Cleanup window will appear. As you can see from the example below, I can free up 434,444 Kb of space by "Cleaning up my (Hard) Disk. You can safely remove any of the files listed by selecting the check-box next to the file type. If you want to learn more about what these files are, simply select the file's name and a brief description will appear. When you are ready, CLICK OK. Move your mouse over the picture below to see this action.

You will be asked if you want to perform these actions. CLICK Yes

Disk Cleanup will begin and remove all of you unnecessary files and you will be finished!