Windows Tweaks: Cleaning Your Computer

Today I will present a couple of features, using as an example my own Windows 7 operating system, that will help you to keep your operating system just as fresh as after its first installation. Why your computer slows down over time is most often due to two reasons: too many entries added to the Windows registry that you do not use, paired with a decrease of space on the Windows drive or auto running to many programs that you do not need either way.

Of course, there is the possibility that you just have a virus on your computer; however, this should not be the case if you have a decent antivirus running on your system 24/7. The first and foremost advice I can give to you if your system is slowing down is to uninstall any programs you may have installed earlier that you are no longer using.

There are a couple of uninstall programs dedicated to just this job; however, for most applications, the basic one included with the operating system is more than enough. Go to the Start menu (via the Windows button) and enter "Remove Programs." Select the "Add or remove programs" option from there in the Control Panel subsection. Alternatively, you can add the following path in the explorer windows and push the enter button: "Control PanelProgramsPrograms and Features" (without the quotes).

There you will see a list with the applications you have installed on your computer. Select the ones you absolutely know you do not want on your computer, and push the uninstall option. Caution: if you see a program and you do not know what it does, leave it there. If you delete it, you may break some functions for  programs you do use.

CCleaner

CCleaner is an optimization and cleaning tool. Download it from here and install it on your system. Once you start it, you can see that it has three main segments: cleaner, registry and tools. The cleaner is for the elimination of all the temporary files. Windows has a general temporary folder (you can find it by typing %Temp% into the windows explorer).

All of your applications should save the temporary files they use while they are running in the temporary folder. In the ideal case scenario, they should also delete them once you close them down. However whenever they malfunction, this will not happen (ever had one of those "program not responding" messages?). Next time they start up, they may or may not check for files created earlier. If they do not do this, the files will remain on the hardware, filling it up.

Due to this, if you are running low on hard space, this is the first thing you should clean out. Furthermore, for debugging reasons most tasks (that fail at some level) in Windows are entered in a log file (or memory dumps are created). If you have multiple problems, the size of these might get out of control.

The files you delete without the shift modifier key are sent to the recycle bin, so that you can bring them back later on. You can empty this, too, if you are low on space. The Windows tab in the Cleaner section refers to these folders, while the Application time will refer to temporary files generated by applications. Select those that you do not want to use any more (or just leave the default selections) and run the analyzer.

Now CCleaner will tell you just how much space it can acquire on your system drive. Push the "Run Cleaner" button to finish the job:

Windows holds all the configuration information about applications in the registry. When you install a new program, its settings should be entered here. The registry works also like a database for anyone searching for information about some components (like what applications will play MP3 files). Installing and uninstalling applications may mean that some of them leave entries that are no longer true.

At startup, Windows will load the registry. A large registry of course will take much more time to load, and a lot of invalid entries will cause further problems. To remove these kinds of things, you need the registry subsection. Start with "Scan for Issues" and once you are done, do "Fix selected issues...": 

Now if you're concerned about safety you can back up your Windows; however, it is not necessary. Then just go to "Fix All Selected Issues":

The final tab is the Tools. Windows, in order to facilitate the system restore feature, makes a backup of your settings after each significant modification to your OS. Of course, this takes up space on the system drive. Preserving the last one is essential in case something goes wrong; however, it is safe to delete older backups if you require more space.

From here, you can also uninstall applications. Another section exists to disable programs from starting together with Windows. However, the usage of this is unnecessary with the next program I am going to present: Soluto. Nevertheless, CCleaner is great software; make sure to run it from time to time.

Soluto

The slogan of Soluto is Anti-Frustration Software. Currently it is still in beta, but nonetheless it works very well. The idea behind it is that every company would like to use their technologies as much as possible. For this, they add services to  Windows that run at start up. Guess what? Starting a program at start up takes time. In theory, a single additional service should not be an issue; however, when you have multiple applications on your computer (and we all do) and every one of them starts at start up, it adds up.

For a fast system start up, you want to make the list of startup programs as short as possible. Moreover, some of them exist only because of someone's crazy idea, like the automatic update feature. Let me say for the last time to all developers: I will update my application when I want to, and if you are unable to make at most an update check when I start the program, then just leave it.

Once you install Soluto, it will measure the startup time for your computer every time. This way you can quickly see if a new startup item has been added, and just how much slower your computer's start up will be due to this. When the startup finishes, Soluto will show it to you in the corner of your wallpaper.

Judging yourself whether or not stopping a program is good may not always be the best idea. To help you, Soluto builds on the PC Genome project. This in fact constructs a database of the existing software, makes a statistic pertaining to what most users did with that application, and shows it to you, so you can have a reference when deciding. This way, more experienced users can help the others.

Now you can open the main window from the system icon in the tray. There you can see, in summary, what application took how long to complete. The applications are stored mainly in four sections: removable, potentially removable, required and removed applications.

Removable applications are the update ones I said earlier; the potentially removable are the ones you may use or not depending on your personal preference (like MySQL Server). The removed application section contains the applications you chose earlier to remove from the start up list. However, to get the options pertaining to an item:

You get the statistic for what other users did, and you can choose one of the following settings: Pause, In Boot or Delay. Pause removes the item from the start up; In Boot will cause it to start up right after you log in to your account. Delay is another great option to have. It will set the application to start around a minute after you complete the login. This is good for applications that you do use, but not right away after a system start up.

Soluto has one of the most user-friendly and elegant-looking software user interfaces I have seen lately. It also has a history view, if you are interested, that shows what additions ruined your system's performance:

Personal Files

While the earlier applications were intended to solve what other applications and Windows does wrong, now it is time to focus on your screw up. I consider myself a very systematic man. I like to organize my files and folders. However, sometimes even I forget where and why I put something on my hard disk drive. Usually I notice this only when I am low on hard drive space, and I take the time to go through every directory and see what is inside them. However, doing this is troublesome, as it takes up too much time.

We need a tool that lets us quickly snip out the large files or a collection of unwanted files from the hard drive. A good start to this is to show the sizes of the folders. However, doing this does not give you an immediate idea of what is inside it. WinDirStat is an application that will draw in front of you your file system's structure. To do this, it uses rectangles, and in order to show the file types, it relies on colors. The size of the drawn rectangle is proportional to the folder size.

Download and install the program, start it up, select the partitions you want to see, and wait for the program to finish with the scan. In the end, one of my partitions looked like this:

Above this you will see the folder size ordered tree view, too; however, once you get used to it, the image above shows so much more. First, look over the color legend explaining the file types:

If you are in hurry, you are looking for large files to delete. In this case just locate large uniform rectangles. Click on them, and instantly you are there in the tree view. Now you can decide if you want to keep it or not. I, for one, from time to time download large files split up into multiple rar files in places I completely forget about.

With this visualization, I just find the color of a rar file in the legend and then search for rectangles containing many small rectangles with this color. An example of this you can see in the image below (the yellow rectangle was added by me later for better visualization):

Finding file types within your system becomes simple with this. You can delete files right inside WinDirStat.

This will be all for today. I hope you picked up some valuable information. Express your thoughts about the article or the applications presented inside it here on the blog following the article, or you are welcome to share the techniques you apply to have a fast and fresh OS all the time. Before I say goodbye I would like to encourage you to rate my article and Live With Passion!