CCleaner is a marvelous tool to cleanup acumulating junk on your computer. To be run about every 2 to 3 months.
Files clutter slow down the computer by making file access less effecient. It also tend to promote files fragmentation.
Get an external drive and transfert the files that you only rarely use to it. Do the same with those large music and video files. Access speed is not crutial for those, so the slightly slower transfert speed usualy associated with external drives is not a factor. It can free up a LOT of space.
Take a look at the installed applications.
If you find any that you no longer use or need, think about uninstalling them. DON'T touch the drivers and associated applications.
Disable ANY and ALL preloaders and quick starters. NONE are needed, all make your computer slower.
Another very good alternative browser: Firefox.
As Chrome, it's faster and generaly beter than internet explorer.
For both, get the adblock and no-script addons.
They make your browsing faster and safer.
Over time, the files on a hard drive get fragmented.
If you have an SSD, fragmentation is not an isue as there are no moving parts. In this case, skip the following.
If you have a coventional drive, you MUST defragment it regularly, weekly is a good schedule. Some premium defragmenters have some kind of smart, set and forget, scheduling.
Get Defraggler. It a GREAT and free defragmenter that make the included defragmenter look absolutely lame. It will defragment a drive with less than 1% free space, although it will take a LOOOONG time in that case...
If you took some time cleaning file clutter and removen useless applications, the liberated space will make defragmentation much faster.
On a laptop, connect the charger and let it run overnight.
On a conventional hard drive, defragmentation will make your anti-virus (like Malwarebyte) and anti-spyware/junkware (like Spybot) preform their scans much faster. Reducing file clutter will also make the scans faster as there will be less files to scan.
Electro, May 2013
