by Team Vico

Created on: July 04, 2010   Last Updated: July 06, 2010

When a PC and applications are not running as quickly and smoothly as they once did, a general cleanup of your PC proflisted below a few tips that will clean up your PC and are based but not exclusive to windows XP. Some or all of the tips below can be employed depending on your setup and circumstances.

 Here are six useful tips in cleaning up your PC:

1. Disk Cleanup:

Disk cleanup works to free up more disk space by cleaning up setup files and deleted items.

Go to:

-         start

-         programs

-         accessories

-         system Tools

-         disk cleanup

On launching disk cleanup, your hard drive is scanned and you can, you can select which files you would like to delete in the process like the recycle bin and setup files.

2. Disk Defragmenter. Defragmenter works to speed up access to your data.

Go to:

-         start

-         programs

-         accessories

-         system Tools

-         disk Defragmenter

Disk Defragmenter works to speed up your PC by rearranging files in a more structured and organized manner so that they can be accessed more easily and therefore more quickly by your hard drive.

When you run Disk Defragmenter, you can select your hard drive and first analyze (a scan of the disk and will produce a general report) and then defragment.  

3. Temporary Internet Files:

Within internet explorer go to ‘tools’ then ‘internet options’  and click on ‘delete cookies’ and ‘delete files’ and click on OK.

4. Clean up temporary files:

A quick way to access temporary files is to go to:

- start

- run’

- type in: %temp%

- click on enter to view the folder

It is safe to delete all files here, if applications are still open some of these files will not remove.

5 .Microsoft Word and Excel:

I have found that the following will clear most Excel or Word related issues. This switch resets the application to its default settings:

- go to start

- run

-  type in the following in the run box:

 excel.exe /cleanviews OR winword.exe /cleanviews (depending on which application you want to clean up).

6. Remove unnecessary programs. A quick way to access add/remove programs:

-start

-run

-type in ‘appwiz.cpl’

A window will open with currently installed applications. It’s very important here to read carefully what is installed and the best practice is if you do not know what the installed application is, leave it alone!

Unused items, for example, MSN toolbar, can be safely uninstalled by clicking on the application to highlight it and then clicking on ‘remove’.

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