Tips for the Digital Pack Rat
House Cleaning for the Not so Geek
You clean your house (most of us at least monthly), take care of your yard (lately almost weekly), and your body (hopefully at least daily). But when was the last time you took care of your computer?
We are starting a series House Cleaning for the Not So Geek. Through the next several posts, we are going to show you how to clean out, back up, and take care of your computer. This will prolong the life of your computer, as well as increase the performance.
Tips for the Digital Pack Rat
This week we will start to clean out our computers. Maybe you downloaded that game two years ago because it looked really cool, but havent played it in the last year. Why are you still hanging on to it? Maybe your teenager likes to download music files and now you have more music downloads than you can listen to in a year? It is time to clean it out. It is just like cleaning house, sometimes you need to get in the refrigerator, the closets, and all the corners, but I promise it doesnt take nearly as long, and you wont be sore afterwards.
To remove that game or other program: Start > All Programs > and look at the programs you have. Click on the folder for that program or right click on the program and you may see a uninstall or remove. If you click that, it will open the uninstall wizard, which will guide you through the process. If the program does not have an uninstaller, simply go to Start > Control Panel > and chose Classic View to the left. Look for Programs and Features (Vista) Add and Remove Programs (Windows XP) and double click on it. You will then see a list of programs, choose the one you no longer want/need and click Uninstall at the top of the page (Vista) to the right of the selected program (Windows XP). Continue until you have removed all of those old programs.
I would recommend to repeat this process every two to three months. Each time will get quicker, as you are consistently cleaning up your computer now.
Now you are on your way to a more efficient computer. Stay tuned next week for a quick tip on backups.
Also take this opportunity while you are in the cleaning mode and go through the documents (I am sure you dont need everything from 5 years ago). To delete those, simply right click > delete. Also, go through all the other closets and see what else you dont need. You may be surprised what you find.
Dont forget to take out the trash when you are done (empty the recycle bin) or you havent freed up any space. Then one final step. Time to run a Disk Cleanup. This tool searches your hard drive disk for files that can safely be deleted. (files such as temporary internet files, program installer files, etc) If you are using Windows Vista or XP, go to Start > Programs > Accessories > System Tools. Click on Disk Cleanup. Select the drive(s) you want to clean up. You will then see a box that will let you choose which items you would like to delete. The program will find files to delete or compress.
I would recommend to repeat this process every two to three months. Each time will get quicker, as you are consistently cleaning up your computer now.
Now you are on your way to a more efficient computer. Stay tuned next week for a quick tip on backups.