Thomas Kobelsky's Blog

August 23, 2010

It wasn't even a year ago that you bought a brand new computer with a 1 terabyte harddrive. You thought you'd never be able to fill that puppy.

Since you're so tech savvy, you also thought you'd be smart and stick with Windows XP instead of going with that crap-fest Vista, or the OS X knock-off known as Windows 7.
However, you didn't seem to take into account for all the random things that Windows XP has enabled on default that really sucks the life out of your system.

We're here today to show you how to throw a Phoenix Down onto your harddrive and bring everything back up to speed. Since I recently did all this stuff as an experiment on my PC, I'm going to be going through everything on my laptop as I do this.

Let's start off by doing something everyone should always do no matter what: Show Hidden Folders. This is entirely optional and 100% reversible if you don't like it. All you need to do is open My Computer (or any Explorer window, really) and click Tools->Folder Options.


Once you click that, a Window should open. Navigate to the View tab and enable the "Show hidden files and folders" option.


Click apply and close it.

Now we got that out of the way, let's move on to something that's actually going to help us: Deleting Service Pack Uninstall folders. These are pesky temporary folders that are installed on your computer whenever a Service Pack is installed. If you want to uninstall the Service Pack, these folders are simply removed. However, it won't harm your computer if you remove them without an uninstall, as they essentially do nothing unless the Service Pack is uninstalled.

Since we turned on the "Show hidden files and folders" open, we should be able to see a bunch of blue named folders in C:\WINDOWS.


If you want to see just how much room those folders are wasting, highlight them all and check their Properties (Right Click->Properties).


Highlight all the folders that begin with "$NtUninstall" as well as the first entry ("$hf_mig$"), then simply Delete the files.

There's many other folders to empty, so I may as well list them right now. I'm not going to add pictures, because they'll pretty much all look the same.

Delete ONLY the contents of the following folders:
C:\WINDOWS\system32\dllcache\	This folder holds a backup of every system file that windows uses.
C:\WINDOWS\servicepackfiles\i386\	This folder is the same as the dllcache, but has the new files that were updated by a Service Pack.
C:\WINDOWS\driver cache\i386\	This is one you may not want to delete. It takes up a bit of space, but Windows uses if you ever add or remove windows components and things like printer drivers.
C:\WINDOWS\help\	This folder contains all of the Windows Help files.
C:\WINDOWS\inf\	This folder contains a lot of Windows drivers. If you ever add new hardware, windows looks in this folder, then on your CD drive for the latest drivers. Any hardware you might get will probably come with the drivers on a disk, so this folder is just a wasting space on your hard drive with outdated drivers.
C:\WINDOWS\system32\oobe	In this folder is the Out of Box Experience (The screens you see right after you have installed XP for the first time), and the XP Product Activation stuff. If you have a Retail or OEM version of XP, and you think you might ever need to activate again, DON'T DELETE THIS. So unless you are using XP or 2k3 CORP, you may still need this folder someday.
Delete the folders of the following:
C:\WINDOWS\cursors\	This folder contains some custom cursers for windows.
C:\WINDOWS\downloaded installations\	This folder holds the installers for some programs you download and install. For example, Tweak UI puts its installer in this folder, and so you can repair it or update its components later.
C:\WINDOWS\media\	These are the default windows sounds, if you don't want them, deleting them wont hurt anything.
C:\WINDOWS\system32\usmt\	This folder is the File and Settings Transfer wizard. If you have no need for it, then deleting this wont have any other effects besides the File and Settings Transfer wizard not working anymore.
C:\WINDOWS\msagent	This folder holds the MS Agent program. The MS Agent is a gay little wizard thing that looks like the Office Assistant. If windows wont let you remove the folder, just delete everything inside of it, and everything inside of the parent folder.
C:\WINDOWS\java	This is the MS Java components that don't work at all, and MS got sued over. If you have Windows XP slipstreamed with SP1, you won't have this because MS no longer distributes it. Remove it and replace it with the Java Runtime Environment.
C:\WINDOWS\mui	This is a little app that allows you to switch between multiple languages, if you only use one language, then deleting this won't affect you at all. NOTE: I think this folder only exists on XP Pro because Home Edition doesn't support multiple languages.
C:\Program Files\msn C:\Program Files\netmeeting\	These are the MSN Explorer and Net Meeting applications. If you don't need or use them, then you can delete these folders (For net meeting, you can only delete the files inside). The only thing it will affect is that these programs will know longer work.
WARNING: Some people have reported problems with this, and have not been able to search, try this next one at your own risk!!!
C:\WINDOWS\srchasst	This folder is the XP Search assistant. If you delete it, windows will just use the classic 2k style search instead, which is more functional and easier to use.

Once that's all taken care of, we can move on to Emptying the Prefetch folder. The idea of the Prefetch folder is to pre-load certain commonly used things so that programs take less time to load. This will cause it to over-bloat the system if you open many programs but only use a few of them. For example, if you open Spider Solitaire once a year, it'll keep the prefetched data from the first time you open it. It'll slowly add up, which isn't good for computers with lower hardware specsifications (small harddrive, low amounts of memory, etc).


Go to C:\WINDOWS\Prefetch and simply select all the files and Delete them.


We're also going to create a simple program that will do this for us by simply clicking on it. Open up your favorite text editor (Notepad, Notepad++, Emacs, etc). We're going to be doing a very small bit of programming for DOS, but don't worry: It's super easy. You can either type this out yourself, or copy/paste it into the editor.

echo off del /s C:\WINDOWS\Prefetch\*
Once you have that, don't save the file as a .TXT extension, but rather as a .BAT file. Save it wherever you like, calling it whatever you wish. I saved it on my desktop calling it ClearPrefetch.BAT. Double clicking this should open the CMD Prompt with a dialogue asking "Are you sure, Y/N" and then awaits input. If you put Y and press Enter, it'll empty the Prefetch folder for you.

Now let's being disabling things. First and foremost is the the Pagefile.

The Pagefile is basically an extension of your RAM, but made up of allocations on your harddrive. If you don't have at least 1GB of RAM installed, you should probably skip this step.

To find out how much RAM you have, press the Windows Key (which is located between Ctrl and Alt. Other names for this button are the Super key, Meta key, Windows logo key, the WinKey, the Start key, MOD4, or rarely the Flag key) and the Pause|Break key (located up in the top-right corner by Print Screen and Scroll Lock).


While this window is open, click on the Advanced tab, then click on the Settings button under the Performance category.


This should open another window, so find the Advanced tab again and click on the Change button under the Virtual Memory category. You'll also notice that where it says "Total paging file size for all drives: XXXX MB" means that is how much Harddrive space is reserved for additional virtual memory.


When you click the Change button, it should open yet another window. This one details everything about the Virtual Memory. You can see how big it is, how much Harddrive space you have available, different settings for the pagefile, etc. What we're going to do is simply select the "No paging file" option and click the Set button right beside it. It'll prompt you saying your computer needs to reboot before settings take effect, but just cancel it because we're not done yet.


Once you have that set, close all the windows by hitting Apply and Ok until you're back at the first window.

Since it's still open, why not disable the System Restore? Navigate to that tab.


Simply click the "Turn off System Restore" button and click Apply. It'll probably ask you to reboot before changes take effect, but just cancel again.

If you're on a laptop/netbook/notebook, here's one that's sure to help out a lot: Disabling Hibernation. Please note that if you actually use Hibernation, you can skip this step.

Why are we going to disable Hibernation? Take a look at this image:


As you can see, it says "Disk space required to Hibernate: 991MB"
That is only because my laptop has that much RAM installed. This means that in order to hibernate, the computer needs as much harddrive space available as there is RAM installed in the system. If your laptop has 4GBs of RAM, it would require 4GBs of disk space to Hibernate. It does this by allocating a certain chunk of disk space, similar to the Pagefile, and then copying everything being stored in the RAM to that allocated space when the computer goes into Hibernation. Once the computer returns from Hibernation, everything in that space gets thrown back into the RAM and is restored.

To access this, go to the Control Panel and find Power Options. There should be a window that pops up with a similar layout, so find the Hibernation tab and uncheck the "Enable hibernation" box. Apply the settings and close the window.

*Note* Some laptops are configured differently and may tell you to access your Power Options a different way (Through Toshiba Management for example). It should be pretty straight forward to find the Hibernation settings.

Before the next step, we're going to want to play around with the Recycle Bin.

Actually, we're going to totally disable it.
*NOTE* If you find yourself periodically accidentally deleting files and then restoring them right away, this step may not be a good one to follow. If you continue with this step, a file is lost forever (well, there ARE recovery tools out there) as soon as you delete it.

Just go to the desktop and right click on the Recycle Bin->Properties.
If you have multiple Harddrives installed, it'll give you a tabbed layout, but just stay on the Global tab.


You'll see a layout similar to the image above. If for some reason the "Configure drives independently" is selected, change it to "Use one setting for all drives:" instead and move the slider to use 0% of the Harddrive space (I left mine at 2% because I love 2% milk just that much). Then check off the "Do not move files to the Recycle Bin" option above the slider. You might also want to make sure that "Display delete confirmation dialogue" is enabled now, just incase you accidentally hit the Delete button. This will completely disable the Recycle Bin, but can be reversed if you don't like it.

Now let's go and disable the Drive Indexing.
You will have to apply this to each harddrive you have installed (unless they are in a RAID configuration), which is one reason why I left this near the end. The other reason is that depending on how large and how full your harddrives are, this may take a long time to apply... but don't walk away, as sometimes you get files that you don't have permission to apply attributes to. Then it'll sit there with a prompt waiting for you. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Open My Computer and right click on the C: drive. Near the bottom, you'll see an option "Allow Indexing Service to index the disk for fast file searching."


Disable it. You'll get a pop-up window similar to this:


Make sure to check the second option, "Apply changes to C:\, subfolders and files" and then click "OK" to begin.

As I said before, don't walk away from the computer. You'll sometimes get notifications saying you don't have permission to change the attributes. Click the "OK" or "Ignore" button to continue. You'll probably get quite a few if you have anything Adobe installed.

For the next few steps, we're going to be using third-party applications. Don't worry though, I would never link you to something I wouldn't trust on my own computer.

To start it off, get CCleaner, as we're going to be using it quite a bit right away.

Open CCleaner, go to Tools and run through the list to Remove Programs that you don't use anymore or don't recognize, or don't want. If you see something you don't recognize, Google-Search what it is before you get rid of it.

While we have CCleaner open, let's go back to the Cleaner tab and (using default settings unless you're an expert) Analyze then Clean. It should say some high number that can be removed, and this is a good thing. Make sure Firefox/Chrome/Opera/Safari/IE is closed when you start the Analyze process, or it'll skip over that client's Temporary Files folder.

Now, since CCleaner is so amazing, we're going to keep it open and go to the Registry tab and Scan for Issues. Tons will pop up, so Fix Selected Issues should try to iron some out. This'll simply make your computer's integrity more stable (and that's a good thing).

Another very useful program that Piriform (the makers of CCleaner) made is Defraggler. Download, install, run, be happy.

The next step is going to be basically a no-brainer: Virus/Spyware/Malware scans. Use any that you love, but I prefer the following setup:


And I prefer to run them in that order, one at a time.

Once we have all those things taken care of, it's ultimately up to you to clean out your harddrive of useless junk.

A handy tool to show you where your largest folders are located would be Sequoia View. Download, install, run, clean.

Go to the folders and either remove the media, or Zip them all into compressed folders to save space. You can also compress the files and then burn to a disc for external storage if need be.

Another thing that's a good idea is searching for duplicate files. Sometimes you just forget that you already have a directory with your pictures from last year's summer, so you decide to copy the contents of the CD with the images onto your computer to look at them again.

In order to give you an idea of what we just did, here's a graph I made up detailing just how much each step liberated your harddrive:


This is showing you how much of your harddrive was being reserved for various things. The fuchsia color shows how much of your harddrive you could actually use, while the blue segmented colors were otherwise inaccessible. As you can see, you were only able to use about 66% of your total harddrive space (this is based on a 100GB/102400MB harddrive, and also accounts for the 12.5% Master File Table represented by the Yellow segment).

-tk

Share |