pc clean up

[andy4]

hi all,anyone know how to give pc a good clean up
i do a defrag + disc clean up thru systems tools,
when i need to give a good clean up have to take pc
to local comp shop + at ?20ph can get a bit expensive over the years

[aftermath]

you cant beat the old fdisk then format way, gauranteed to clean your PC

make sure you got all your drivers and a windows CD.

go into the bios and set boot up 1st device to CDrom, then put the CD in , and follow the instructions.
Make sure you have driver backups for sound card, Graphics, LAN e.t.c

[keithed]

OK try this ...

You should check your disk space and defrag regularly.
You can run a clean up and delete the restore points and save a bit of space provided everything is running fine - right click on your C:\ drive from My Computer,choose Disk Cleanup it will take a bit to run and give you a menu, choose More Options then System Restore.

Move your My Docs out of your local profile, check your profile size via right click My Computer, Properties, Advanced, User Profiles - try to keep this as low as possible by creating a new folder on the C:\Keith for example and move all of your My Documents contents to it. You'll need to tell Windows that you've moved this - right click on My Documents wherever you go to it, properties and change the target path to the place you moved them to above C:\Keith.

Other programs I've found useful to protect and speed up and Spyware Blaster, Spybot Search and Destroy and CCleaner - CCleaner is really good at clearing out crap hence its name.

Hope this helps, Keith.

you cant beat the old fdisk then format way, gauranteed to clean your PC

make sure you got all your drivers and a windows CD.

go into the bios and set boot up 1st device to CDrom, then put the CD in , and follow the instructions.
Make sure you have driver backups for sound card, Graphics, LAN e.t.c

[KillerDog]

Use a program called cCleaner, its free, and easy to use. I fix computers for people and this tool saves people alot of money.

[DavC]

as the last two have said, CCleaner (or Crap cleaner as it used to be called) is absolutely fantastic.

if you use it regularly you can set it up to choose which cookies you want to keep (so you will stay logged in on here for example) and then it will just delete the rest. I probably run it near enough every day as it removes temp files from all the websites you visit (which add up in no time at all). It will also delete loads of other crap you dont need.

CCleaner will do basic registry fixes too, and it has never caused uny problems with me (unlike other reg cleaner programs i have tried before)

just make sure you untick the yahoo toolbar installer when your installing it

[Devilfish]

TuneUp Utilites is also a great application and it runs in the background and cleans up regularly.

[pawnhawk]

Got to agree with aftermath, I usually do a it every 6 months, it's suprising what rubbish you collect on the HD.

Also as devilfish says tuneup utils is a great piece of software, I use it all the time.

As for defrag I use disk keeper pro.

Pawnhawk

[thered]

i use the most recommended on download.com called reg supreme(pm for patch) i also use tune up which is good and ccleaner

[Raven]

All I do is defrag the hard drive once in a while, delete some programs I never use, run a virus scan or two and finally run a quick registry clean after it's all done....seems to speed it up abit not that it's ever really noticeably slow for me.

Obviously the formatting the hard drive is the "armageddon" way to do it, the downside is you have to reload absolutely everything and start again from fresh, the upshot of which is those few days you spend reloading everything your PC is like greased lightning because it's basically brand new again.

I just stick to defrags n general clean up because without a hard drive format the computer is never going to be as fast as the day you bought it and having to reload everything doesn't seem worth it to me considering the computer only stays fast for a few days to a week before it becomes slower again.

However if you wanna erase stuff and be sure it's gone then formatting is the way to go (plan b is throwing your hard drive into the river tied to the end of a brick )