How do I Speed Up My Computer By Cleaning Up the Hard Drive?

Over time, there are many places on your hard drive that fill up temporary files.  For example, there’s a temp folder in your user profile and another one under the windows folder.  Your web browsers have temporary file folders.  Windows creates log files when programs crash.  The list goes on.

Not only does this buildup of garbage consume your available storage space and contribute to fragmentation, but it slows down your computer in another way too.  Your drive has an index of all the files stored on it.  That index operates in a way similar to a card catalog in the library (I just gave away my age…)  In any case, your computer has to search the index for every file it wants to find.  The smaller the index, the faster your computer is able to locate the files.

So, let’s take out the trash!  Integration Technologies Inc recommends another free product to help you with this.  That program is called CCleaner and it’s made by the same programmers that provide us with Defraggler.  For your convenience, both of these download links can be found on our resources page.  Simply download and install the software, then click the Run Cleaner button on the lower-right.

Finally, though we think CCleaner is a great product, it has a monitoring feature that runs automatically in the background.  It shouldn’t hurt anything if you leave this running, but we prefer to turn it off.  Simply open CCleaner, click the Options button on the left and then select the Monitoring entry.  You’ll want to uncheck all of these boxes.  When you uncheck Active Monitoring, it’s going to give you a warning similar to “Warning – This action isn’t recommended.”  Don’t be concerned; Just click Yes and then close CCleaner.

When you’re ready to clean again, just open up the program click the Run Cleaner button.  The software will automatically check for updates when you open it.  Updating is up to you, but it shouldn’t hurt anything regardless of your choice!