Cleaning Up Unnecessary Files

Even with today's humongous hard disks, you can still end up with too many useless files taking up too much hard disk space. Fortunately, Windows XP includes a utility that helps you identify and delete unused files on your hard disk.

Disk Cleanup is a great tool to use when you want to free up extra hard disk space for more frequently used files. When you run Disk Cleanup it identifies unused files and, with your permission, deletes them.

To use Disk Cleanup, click the Start button, and then select All Programs, Accessories, System Tools, Disk Cleanup. Disk Cleanup will now start and automatically analyze the contents of your hard disk drive. When it is finished analyzing, it presents the dialog box shown in Figure 24.1.

Figure 24.1. Use Disk Cleanup to identify and delete unused files from your hard disk.

Start by selecting the Disk Cleanup tab. You can have Disk Cleanup delete the following types of files:

• Downloaded Program Files. These are ActiveX controls and Java applets associated with Web pages you've recently visited. It's normally okay to delete these files. If you need them again, they'll be automatically downloaded at that time.

• Temporary Internet Files. These are Web pages cached by your Web browser for faster reloading. It's normally okay to delete these.

  TIP

  Disk Cleanup is the easiest, most efficient way to delete unused files from your hard disk which makes it one of my fav orite utilities. I run Disk Cleanup on the first of every month, without hesitation.

  
  

• Offline Web Pages. These are Web pages you've downloaded for offline viewing. If you're done with them, you might as well delete them.

• Recycle Bin. This clears all recently deleted files from the Windows Recycle Bin. Check this one if you're sure you won't need to undelete any of these files. (Remember once you clear a file from the Recycle Bin, it's really truly deleted. You can't get it back!)

• Temporary Files. These are hidden files that Windows creates while running various programs. It's normally okay to delete these.

• Catalog Files for the Content Indexer. These are files left over from a previous indexing operation that are no longer necessary.

If you want to remove infrequently used programs, Windows components, or older restore points for the System Restore utility, select the More Options tab and make those choices. Otherwise, click OK to begin cleaning up your hard disk.