Easily Clean Junk Files off Your Windows PC

Is your Windows hard drive starts to feel a little tight? A quick way to make some hard disk free space is the transport of the debris, ie, temporary files, old program setup files, cache thumbnails and other pieces of digital waste that accumulate over time.

I ran a quick scan of my system with Disk Cleanup, an essential utility that lives in the Windows Control Panel, and found that I have more than two gigabytes of unnecessary files had on my hard drive.

One of the greatest space pigs Disk Cleanup on my system had 1.89 GB of so-called "temporary files, or backup data from my different programs that are supposed to be removed regularly.

The tool also found 274 MB of setup files from Microsoft Office (which you do not really need, as long as you physically Office DVDs handy), 183 MB "system error memory dump files" (which you can safely Deep Six), and 164 MB to temporary Internet files, not to 116 MB of junk sitting in the desktop trash to mention.

The Disk Cleanup tool gives you a nice overview of all junk files on your system, checking those that you can remove without a second thought. You can also click on other items in the list and decide if you keep them or lose them after reading a brief description.

Here's how to get started: 

• Click the Start menu in the lower left corner of the screen, click Control Panel, System and Security. Then under the Administrative Tools section, click the "Free up disk space" link.

• In a second or two, the Disk Cleanup utility should open, complete with a list of possible files, and the total disk space they use.

• To play safe, you can to remove the items that Windows has already checked for you most likely "Downloaded Program Files" (in principle, temporary files necessary for viewing certain web pages), "Temporary Internet Files" (a cache of old web pages are stored on your computer to your browsing experience to accelerate) and thumbnails (the small icon images used for music, videos, photos, and other documents on your hard disk, you can always later regenerate). Just click the "Clean up system files" button, and you're done.

• If you want more junk from your hard disk zap? Click on each item in the list, read the description, and check the box next to the items you want to delete. Once you're ready, click the "Clean Up" button.