Clean up your PC

Procrastination will never get you anywhere. Why wait until spring is upon us to clean up your computer's hard disk or finally reorganise your files and folders?

You'll be surprised at just how much easier a well-ordered PC is to use and at the improvements in your computer's performance you can make by clearing some of your computing clutter.

Jettison the junk
The best way to start a clean-up of your hard disk is by casting your eye over the documents and files you have stored on your computer and deleting anything you don't need any more.

This is likely to be a time consuming process and rather a dull one to be honest, but you'll be surprised at the amount of stuff you get rid of.

Make sure that any files you do keep are clearly labelled so they are easily recognisable, making them easier and quicker to find using the Find tool in the Start menu in Windows.

Next, you should create a logical filing system or integrate any stray files you've found into your existing system. Windows lends a helping hand here in the form of the My Documents folder, which usually appears as a shortcut on your Desktop.

You can create subfolders for different types of file, such as images or music files or files for different users if more than one person uses your PC.

If you find you have a large number of image or music files, which can take up an awful lot of hard disk space, why not store them on removable media rather than on your PC and reclaim some hard disk capacity?

It's great to be able to send music files and digital photos to friends and family, but even if you've been sent digital photographs and music files in a compressed file format, these attachments can still take up a sizeable chunk of your hard disk.

If you've sent attachments, these will probably still be sitting in your Sent Items folder, feasting on your hard disk's valuable megabytes.

To combat this, search your Inbox and Sent Items folders for emails with attachments and save any attachments you want to keep to your hard disk or removable media, then delete the email.

Better still, if your email application's preferences allow it, instruct your computer to regularly delete saved attachments after a set period.

A permanent solution
Next, turn your attention to the temporary internet files that your computer creates and squirrels away for future use when you surf the web.

If you double-click on My Computer on your Desktop, then Windows and Temporary Internet Files, you'll find a mine of what are likely to be pretty useless files.

These are internet cache files and contain parts of web pages you have previously visited, which your computer stores so it can open that web page faster the next time.

This may seem like a handy trick but your PC's cache of these files is likely to include files associated with sites you aren't going to visit again.

View this directory by date and chuck away any files that have not been modified in the past few weeks. Once you've done that, right-click on the Internet Explorer icon on your Desktop, select Properties, then click on the Settings button under the General settings tab.

You can then use the sliding tab to limit the storage capacity for temporary internet files to 50MB if you have a relatively fast computer with a broadband connection.

If you're using a dial-up connection, or if your PC is slower, set your cache limit to 200MB and check it regularly to get rid of any old temporary internet files.

While you're happily working away on a Word document or editing an image file, Windows is busy beavering away behind the scenes making temporary backup files to protect the work in progress in the event that your PC crashes.

Handy though this may be when something does go wrong, Windows doesn't tidy up after itself and, if you've had your PC for a few years and have never cleared out your temporary files, you'll be surprised at just how many files are in there.

You can try to gain access to your PC's hoard of temporary files and delete them manually but you're likely to miss some, so it's far easier to let Windows do the legwork for you. Double-click on the My Computer icon on your desktop and right-click on your hard disk (usually labelled C:) in the menu that appears.

Then select Properties and click the Disk Cleanup button under the General tab. Check the box next to the type of file you wish to delete, in this case Temporary Files, and then click on OK. This approach also works for temporary internet files if you don't want to delete them manually.

By this point, your Recycle Bin may look set to burst, but wait a couple of days before you empty it just in case you've deleted something you later decide you should have kept.

If everything's still working fine after a few days of use, you're probably safe to go ahead and delete the contents of the Recycle Bin for good.

Prepare to uninstall
With so many interesting applications and demos available to download from the internet, it can be tempting to go download crazy. There are likely to be any number of applications you've installed on your PC but no longer use or games that you have played to death and are now bored with.

While you're in the frame of mind to clear out any junk you don't need, it's time to uninstall them. You can do this by selecting Settings, Control Panel from the Start menu.

Double click on the Add/Remove programs icon and a dialogue box will appear on your screen. Scroll through the menu of software and select the application you want to uninstall from the list in the dialogue box, then click the Add/Remove button.

Whenever you install a new piece of software on your PC, you will also be installing an associated 'Read Me' file which gives you information on the application.

If you don't need the application any more, you won't need the Read Me file either. While they are small in size, they can quickly add up to a fair bit of clutter on your hard disk.

Usually these will get blitzed automatically when you uninstall the associated application, but if you want to be thorough go to Start, Find and perform a search for 'readme' on your PC's hard disk. If in doubt whether a Read Me file is still of use, read through it before you consign it to the Recycle Bin.

Start as you mean to go on
Having put all that time and effort into getting your hard disk into shape, you'll want to keep it that way. Now is a good time to back up your PC, so you can return to the same state of order if your hard disk starts looking unruly again or in case your computer suffers a major crash.

You can save specific files and folders on removable media manually but the easiest way to make a backup of your PC's entire hard disk, including all your user settings, is to use an application like PowerQuest Drive Image, will set you back around £40.

This makes a complete copy of the hard disk, called an 'image', which you can reinstall if your computer suffers a major system failure.

You can store the image you create on a series of recordable CDs or DVDs or you can create a partition in your hard disk and save the image there. Software such as Partition Magic will help you here, as will our Workshops.

Run defragmenter
If you've stripped your hard disk of all superfluous content and your PC is still running sluggishly, it might be time for a more comprehensive reorganisation of the data stored on your hard disk.

When you save a file or install an application on your PC, your computer will not necessarily store all the associated data in one place but deposits data in different locations all over the hard disk.

This is known as fragmentation and can mean that, in time, your PC takes longer to open applications and documents because it has to search the entire hard disk to find all the relevant bits and pieces. When your hard disk becomes really fragmented the decrease in your PC's speed becomes very noticeable.

Your PC has a handy tool that will combat the effects of fragmentation. Go to Start, Programs, Accessories and select System Tools. Then select Disk Defragmenter and choose your hard disk - this should be labelled (C:) - press OK and let your PC do the rest.

This tool puts your hard disk back in order by grouping together all the data associated with a particular application or file. Beware, though, that Disk Defragmenter can take several hours to run, depending on the size of your hard disk. For this reason, you might want to leave it to run overnight.

A PC clean-up isn't necessarily the most exciting way to spend a couple of hours but, with a little know-how and a little patience, you can bring order to your computer in next to no time and set yourself up for another year's hassle-free computing.