Empty your Windows Temp directory

• Close all open programs.
• Then open Windows Explorer and navigate to C:WindowsTemp.
  (Note: If Windows is installed on another drive, substitute the appropriate drive letter for C:. While C:WindowsTemp is the default location and common on most Windows systems, your temp directory could also be located in another place, e.g. C:Temp)
• Open the folder and press Ctrl-A on your keyboard to high-light the entire contents of the Temp folder and push the Delete key to get rid of all this junk.

Empty the Bin

• When you delete files from your drive, they don’t actually get deleted right away.
• Double-click on the Recycle Bin icon to see what is in here.
• Make sure that everything in here is just junk, then close this window, right-click on the Recycle Bin icon and select Empty Recycle Bin.

Remove old unused programs

• You probably have a lot of unused programs wasting disk space.
• Go through the list of currently installed programs on your PC and remove everything that you don’t use anymore.
• Go to Start/Settings/Control Panel/Add/Remove Programs, browse the list, and high-light and remove what is no longer wanted.
• Some programs don’t take up too much space but others can take up hundreds of MB.

Defrag your drive frequently

• Over time, your hard drive will become fragmented, meaning that files are scattered all over the drive
• By defragmenting your hard drive, you rearrange files, programs, and unused space on your hard drives so that programs run faster and files open more quickly
• Go to Start/Programs/Accessories/System Tools/Disk Defragmenter
• Click the Settings button and make sure both boxes – “Rearrange program files” and “Check the drive for errors” – are checked and choose the option to use “Every time I defragment my Hard Drive”
• Then select the drive you wish to defragment
• Depending on how fragmented and how large the drive is, this process can take anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours so be prepared to leave the computer alone for a while until this has finished

Scan your drive for errors frequently

• Every drive has a few bad clusters and will develop more over time. In addition, hard drives can have lost file fragments, cross-linked files, and other file system errors
• To check for these types of errors and correct them, go to Start/Programs/Accessories/System Tools/ScanDisk
• Make sure the box to “Automatically fix errors” is selected
• Check the Advanced button for more settings. The default settings are usually fine
• Then select the drive you want to scan, and click Start