A LIGHT SPRING CLEAN
Discover how much space and resources you can reclaim armed with only Windows 10’s tools
Alight spring clean can free up drive space and improve your PC’s performance without involving any hard work or even third-party tools. Everything we feature on these two pages is done using Windows’ own built-in tools, so without further ado, let’s get started.
First, check your hard drive is in good working order. The quickest way to force Windows 10 to perform a complete check on your hard drive is to right-click the “Start” button, and choose “Command Prompt (Admin).” Type the following into the command prompt window, then hit Enter:
You’re told the drive can’t be locked (because it’s in use), so press Y, then when you next restart, Windows performs a complete check of your hard drive, attempting to correct any errors it comes across. If it finds and fixes any, you may immediately get a speed boost. Now repeat for any other drives you have attached—if you get a warning about forcing a dismount, we suggest hitting N, then Y to run the check when you next reboot. Once your drives have been checked, it’s time to begin cleaning.
Remove Unwanted Apps
How many programs have you installed on your PC? How many do you still use? Now is the perfect time to go through all the desktop programs and Microsoft Store apps you have installed, cleaning out those you no longer need or use. To do this, click “Start > Settings.” Select “System,” followed by “Apps & features.”
All installed apps and programs are listed alphabetically—you can, however, sort by size (useful if you need to free up drive space) or installation date. Go through the list, clicking any programs you no longer need, and choosing “Uninstall” to remove them using the standard program installer. Some uninstallers leave Registry entries and program files behind—for a more thorough way to remove programs, turn the page.
Perform a Disk Clean
Open File Explorer, and select “This PC” on the left to reveal a list of all your hard drives. Right-click your C drive (or the drive Windows is installed on), and choose “Properties,” then click the ‘“Disk Cleanup” button. The step-by-step guide reveals how the tool works—basically, it enables you to quickly clear up all kinds of detritus, from the contents of various temporary folders to redundant system error logs, and even older System Restore points. You can run Disk Cleanup across other drives, too, but it’s usually most effective on the drive Windows is installed on.
It’s worth taking a pause before simply deleting everything that Windows suggests. For example, if you’ve just upgraded to a new version of Windows, you should find a “Previous Windows installation(s)” entry, offering tens of gigabytes of data ready to free up—don’t select this until you’re happy you won’t be rolling back to that previous version (note that Windows usually deletes these files after a set time anyway; typically 30 days).
Recently installed a new driver and not sure whether it’s causing problems? Don’t
touch “Device driver packages,” otherwise you lose the “Roll back” option in Device Manager. Finally, if you’re in the middle of troubleshooting a problem using a tool such as WhoCrashed ( www.resplendence. com), deleting the “System error memory dump files” is not recommended until you’ve finished fixing your problem. Long story short: Make sure you read the description of each setting before choosing whether or not to delete it, and if in doubt, leave it where it is for now.
Trim Startup Items
One of the biggest bottlenecks of PC performance is the number of processes and programs running in the background. We look at more extreme ways of bringing these under control later on in the feature, but for now, the most effective way to give your PC a shot in the arm is to review—and clean out, if necessary—the programs that are set to start with your PC.
The simplest way to do this is with the help of Task Manager, so right-click the taskbar, and choose “Task Manager.” Click “More details,” if necessary, then switch to the “Startup” tab. You’ll see a list of programs set to load with Windows, complete with publisher, status (enabled at this point), and—crucially—startup impact. This latter column helps you quickly determine which are the biggest resource-hogging programs.
Some programs are—by necessity—vital to the well-being of your PC, while others may be required on a regular basis, such as OneDrive or your cloud sync provider. Others, however, can be safely disabled, so they only run when you want them to. To do this, right-click the offending entry, and choose “Disable.” It’ll shave seconds off your startup, free up memory and other resources, and if you find enough items to disable, could make a noticeable difference to the performance of your PC.
Don’t recognize an entry? Right-click it, and choose “Search online” to search the web for the underlying file name. Disabled entries can be restored later—right-click, choose “Enable”—but if you’d like to remove them completely, explore the program’s own settings or preferences for an option to do so, and they should vanish from sight.
More Cleanup Tweaks
One way to improve performance is to take control of the Windows search index. This database helps speed up searches on frequently accessed folders, by scanning them for content, and storing them in a database. Sometimes, you’ll want to add folders to this index—data folders stored outside your user folder, for instance— while removing others.
To manage these settings, type “indexing” into the “Search” box, and click “Change how Windows searches.” Click “Modify” to choose which folders get indexed, by selecting or unselecting them, or click “Advanced,” where you can change the index location (handy if you’d like to store it on another partition for retrieving after a Windows reinstall), or switch to the “File Types” tab to choose exactly which sort of files you want to include in your index. This latter tip enables you to tune the search index to only find specific document or image types, if those are the kinds of files you typically search for.
If you’re left feeling dissatisfied by your light spring clean, turn the page to dig deeper and really start to clear the clutter.