Things you can do to help get the most out of your computer.
Reduce the size of your Recycle Bin. By default, Windows XP is set to use 12% of you hard disk space for the recycle bin. If you have an 80GB hard drive, the recycle bin is going to use 9.6GB.
- Right click on the recycle bin.
- Select Properties from the menu that appears.
- Move the slider to select a smaller size.
Windows Vista is a little better by default, usually set to around 9% of the drive's size. There is no slider in Vista, you have to do some math and enter a number.
I generally go down to 3%, which is 2.4GB on an 80GB hard drive. 7.2GB Gained!
Reduce the size of the System Restore files. By default, Windows XP uses another 12% of you hard drive space for System Restore.
- Right click on the My Computer icon.
- Select Properties from the menu that appears.
- Click on the System Restore tab along the top of the window.
- Click on the Settings button (center right side of window).
- Move the slider to select a smaller size.
This can also be reduced to 3% to give you back some storage. Between this and the recycle bin tweak mentioned above, you can gain over 14GB of an 80GB hard drive's space for music or pictures instead of system files.
Windows Vista does not allow you to easily manipulate the size of the system restore files. It will use up to 15% of your hard drive for System Restore.
Clean up you Registry. There may be entries in the registry that are no longer valid. Getting rid of these entries can help improve system performance. There are many programs available to help with this task, I use Easy Cleaner.
Get rid of temporary files. Easy Cleaner also has a tool for removing temporary files which will free up hard drive space.
Eliminate unnecessary programs that auto start with Windows. There is a utility built into windows called MSCONFIG (click on Start, click on Run, type in msconfig and press enter) which is useful for seeing the programs that are starting automatically with Windows. Other programs will give you a little better idea of where the program came from. Easy Cleaner has a tool that lets you examine the programs that auto start with your system. AutoRuns is another program that shows everything that starts with Windows.
Many times the programs you cannot identify may be some form of Malware. See the Malware Removal page to find a tool to help eliminate them.
Defragment your hard drive. Defragmenting your hard drive moves files around on your hard drive so that they can be accessed more quickly by Windows.
I will add some tutorials for performing some of these tasks. Check back for updates!