How to Clean the Junk Off Your PC

In my earlier life, I worked for the Port of Seattle as a systems analyst and often pulled my share of help calls from PC users. Often, during a visit, we in the computer department needed to clean up the PC in order to make it run efficiently enough to fix the original problem called in. In this article I explain a number of tools and how they're used. If you use your PC a lot, you should probably follow these same steps on a monthly basis. Many of you will be delighted to discover tools that are free and probably already installed on your PC, but you didn't read the manuals to discover they existed.

But before I get into the procedure for ridding your junk, you should also back up your data to safe place(s) and have a virus protection program running on your PC. If you're a writer or other business person that uses their PC regularly, by safe place(s) I mean, one or more of the following-CD, network server, and/or flashcard and have copies in a fireproof safe and stored away from home with your favorite person in the world. These three things will save you more grief than you will believe and probably money, too.

Step 1: Use the free Norton Spyware Scanner available for download onto your Internet browser toolbar. This will eliminate any pesky programs and cookies that tell the world about what's on your computer.

Step 2: Clean up your browsing history, cookies, passwords, temporary files and other data. On Internet Explorer use the Tools function and the Internet Options and then click on the Clean up history and Clean up temporary files options.

Step 3: Use PC tools to rid yourself of other temporary files. Click on Start > Programs > Accessories > System Tools and > Disk Cleanup

Let the tool clean up everything checked unless you know you need some of it.

Step 4: Check all the directories where you store Word documents for temporary files beginning with a tilde (~) character. Make sure Word is closed before you do it. These files are created to help you restore from a crash, but sometimes they make your PC act funny and use lots of space.