Windows 7 : General Maintenance Tools (part 2) - Cleaning Up Your Disk Drives

2. Cleaning Up Your Disk Drives

Over time, the many types of temporary files created when you browse the Internet, install programs, or update your computer can eat up the free space on your computer’s disks. As your computer’s primary disk fills to 85 percent or more of its total capacity, you may start to notice that it’s not as responsive as it used to be. Your computer may slow down as its primary disk fills to capacity, because it depends on this free space to write the page file and other temporary files it needs to use. To help prevent performance problems due to your primary disk being too full, you should periodically clean up your computer’s disks using Disk Cleanup. Table 20-1 provides a summary of the types of temporary files Disk Cleanup can help you track down and remove.

Table 1. Temporary files that you can clean up

Type of temporary file	Description
Downloaded program files	Contains programs downloaded for use by your browser, such as ActiveX controls and Java applets. These files are temporary, and you can delete them.
Microsoft Office temporary files	Contains logfiles that Office created as well as other temporary files that Office uses. These files are temporary, and you can delete them.
Offline files	Contains local copies of network files that you’ve designated for offline use. These files are stored to enable offline access, and you can delete them.
Offline web pages	Contains web pages that have been stored locally for viewing offline.
Recycle Bin	Contains files that have been deleted from the computer but not yet purged. Emptying the Recycle Bin permanently removes the files.
Previous Windows Installations	Previous Windows installations are saved under Windows.old. After you’ve saved any necessary data from previous Windows installations, including user data, you can use remove the related files and free up space.
Setup logfiles	Contains logfiles that Windows created during setup. If your computer is fully installed and you have no problems with the installation, you can delete the setup logfiles.
System error memory dump files	Contains dump files Windows created because of a STOP error. If you’ve resolved the problem that caused the STOP error or do not plan to send the dump file to Microsoft or another support technician, you can delete the dump files.
System queued Windows error reporting files	Windows Error Reporting creates several types of temporary files that are used for error reporting and solution checking. Once you’ve resolved any problems or if there are no current problems, you can delete these temporary files.
Temporary files	Contains information stored in the Temp folder. These files are primarily temporary data or work files for applications.
Temporary Internet files	Contains web pages stored to support browser caching of pages. These files are temporary, and you can delete them.
Temporary offline files	Contains temporary data and work files for recently used network files. These files are stored to enable working, and you can delete them.
Thumbnails	Contains thumbnails of pictures, videos, and documents Windows 7 has created. When you access a folder the first time, Windows 7 creates thumbnails of pictures, videos, and documents. These thumbnails are saved so that they can be quickly displayed the next time you access a folder. If you delete thumbnails, they are re-created the next time you access a folder.

You can clean up temporary files by completing the following steps:

1. Click Start→All Programs→Accessories→System Tools→Disk Cleanup.

2. In the Disk Cleanup: Drive Selection dialog box, shown in Figure 4, select the disk that you want to clean up and then click OK.

NOTE

For best results on a computer with multiple drives, perform this procedure twice. The first time, select the primary system disk as the drive you want to clean up. The second time, select the primary disk that you use for saving documents and related files as the drive you want to clean up.

1. Disk Cleanup then examines the selected drive, looking for temporary files that can be deleted and files that are candidates for compression. The more files on the drive, the longer the search process takes.

2. When Disk Cleanup finishes, you’ll see a list of files that can be deleted. To add system files to the clean up list click the “Clean up system files” button, select the primary system drive and then click OK. The primary system disk is the disk with the Windows logo.

3. You’ll see a list of both user and system files that can be deleted, similar to the list shown in Figure 5. Only a few types of temporary files are selected by default. Because of this, you’ll want to carefully review the other types of temporary files that you can delete. As shown in the example, only 8.02 MB of data was selected for deletion by default, but I was able to increase this to 46.4 GB by selecting other types of unnecessary files.

4. After you select additional checkboxes as necessary, click OK. When prompted to confirm the action, click Yes.

Figure 4. Selecting the drive to clean up

Figure 5. Selecting the cleanup options

When Disk Cleanup finishes, I recommend that you restart your computer and consider the two additional options it provides:

Program Clean Up

Helps you free up space by removing programs that you do not use

System Restore and Shadow Copy Clean Up

Helps you free up space by removing all but the most recent restore point and shadow copy

I recommend backing up and restarting your computer before using these cleanup options to ensure that your computer is in a bootable state, that no updates need to be applied, and that no current errors need to be resolved. You can use Disk Cleanup to help you clean up programs, as well as system restore and shadow copies, by completing these steps:

1. Click Start, type cleanmgr in the Search box, and then press Enter.

2. In the Disk Cleanup Options dialog box, select a disk to clean up and then click OK.

3. Click the “Clean up system files” button, select the primary system drive and then click OK.

4. In the Disk Cleanup dialog box, select the More Options tab, as shown in Figure 6.

5. To remove all system restore and shadow copies except for the current restore point, click “Clean up” under System Restore and Shadow Copies. When prompted to confirm that you want to delete this data, click Delete.

6. To find programs to clean up, click “Clean up” under Programs and Features. On the Programs and Features page in the Control Panel, select a program that you want to remove and then click Uninstall.

Figure 6. Cleaning up programs and other files as necessary