Cleaning Up a Disk

Cleaning up a disk involves removing unneeded files to make room for other files on your computer, which can be difficult if you don’t know the significance of each file. You can use a Windows program called Disk Cleanup to clean up your hard disk drive safely and effectively. Disk Cleanup searches your drive, then lists temporary files, Internet cache files, the Recycle Bin, and unnecessary program files that you can safely delete. Disk Cleanup also gives you the option to remove Windows components and installed programs that you no longer use. You can select the types of files you want Disk Cleanup to delete. Before you select and delete files, make sure you will not need them in the future. If you have multiple users on your computer, you can specify whether to clean up only your files or all the files on the computer (New!).

Clean Up a Disk

Click the Start button, point to All Programs, click Accessories, click System Tools, and then click Disk Cleanup.

Click My files only or Files from all users on this computer.

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If necessary, click the Drives list arrow, select a disk, and then click OK.

Wait while Disk Cleanup calculates how much space it can free up.

Select the check boxes for the folders and files you want to delete.

To view the contents of a folder, click View Files, and then click the Close button.

Click OK, and then click Yes.