Quite often, a lot of the work I do with computers just involves giving the systems (mainly running Microsoft Windows XP or Vista) a general clean-up and speed-up, as they tend to slow down and clog up over time. I’ll try and run through a couple of things which you can do to speed your machine up as well as take you through the general process I go through with each clean-up job. For the purposes of this guide, I’ll be using Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005, however a lot of the points can be applied throughout the XP (and indeed Vista) family of systems.

Step One – Running Virus and Adware Scans

The reason why your PC could be slowing up may be that it has become infected with a virus or adware. The two terms are sometimes confused, as while both are programs that compromise your PC’s security, adware installs constant pop-up advertising and other annoying paraphernalia, whereas viruses are generally seen as more malicious programs that can physically harm your operating system and possibly stop your system from functioning.

To keep these nasty things away, I use a combination of two well-known programs that are both completely free – Lavasoft’s AdAware 2007 (adware scanner) and Alwil’s Avast! Home Edition (anti-virus). Avast will need registration, but this is just an email address so that they can send you a serial key.

Before installing Avast, make sure that you have uninstalled any other anti-virus programs, as these could interfere with Avast’s scanner. Also, before running scans, make sure that both programs are fully up-to-date with definitions and program files using their integrated update functions. I generally find that it’s best to run Avast outside of Windows on a boot-time scan, as this allows it to delete any unwanted files that are locked and in-use when the scan is running.

With those scans done and any nasty unwanted programs and files removed, you can then move on to the next stage and free up some disk space.

Step Two – Freeing Up Disk Space

Despite hard drives becoming faster, cheaper and larger – is seems that there will never be enough space to keep everyone’s music, documents and movies while also being able to install today’s resource-hungry operating systems (yes, I’m looking at you Windows Vista…) and games. Sometimes it can help to free up disk space that Windows uses for various purposes – temporary files, caches, Recycle Bin, Windows Media Player sync files among others. This space is pretty much wasted if the system is running properly and as it should be.

You can run the disk clean-up utility by going to Start –> All Programs –> Accessories –> System Tools. This will give you a window that looks similar to the one on the right.

Before you go clearing all of those temporary files, you can also free up some space by deleting all but the most recent System Restore checkpoint. While there is some danger in doing this – as if something does go wrong with your machine, there will only be one checkpoint to choose from – but if the system is running happily and you haven’t made any major hardware or software changes in a month or so, the previous restore points will not be needed. You can switch to the More Options, then click on Clean Up in the System Restore section of the screen to clear the restore points. My advice would be that if you’re not absolutely sure that your system is running properly, don’t delete the restore points. Saving about 2GB of disk space is a big price to pay if the system suddenly bites the dust without warning.

After clearing the restore points, you can head back over to the main Disk Cleanup tab. I generally check every box with the exception of “Compress Old Files”, as I know that I won’t need the data – I still have my Microsoft Office installation CD for example, so there is no need to keep the cached Office install information. As with the restore points, if you’re not sure, don’t delete the files. Clicking on OK will confirm your choices and will clean the ticked boxes.

Step Three – Defragmenting

A common issue with Windows is the ability for it to spread files right across the hard drive in tiny pieces. To give you an analogy of what this is like for the hard disk to read fragmented files, imagine a vinyl turntable having to reposition it’s needle every fraction of a second to read the next piece of music from the vinyl. Defragmentation is just the process of bringing these tiny parts of files back together and gluing them into one easily-accessible place on the hard drive.

To start the disk defragmenter, go to Start –> All Programs –> Accessories –> System Tools –> Disk Defragmenter. Clicking on your C drive and then clicking Analyse will analyse the drive for fragmented file and will produce something like the screenshot below:

Windows will normally tell you that the drive doesn’t need defragmenting, however I generally go ahead and run the defragmenter anyway. Depending on the drive size, this could take several hours to complete, so it’s best left overnight or run when you are away from the PC for a considerable length of time. On isolated occasions, it may be worth running the defragmenter twice, as one run will get rid of the fragmented files, and the second run will pull files together into a lump so that they can be access quicker. This technique could be useful when large sections of data have been deleted, leaving holes in the file structure.

Done!

You have now (hopefully) managed to speed up your Windows XP system: congratulations! I generally tend to run this routine once every month or so to keep the system fresh and running properly. If you’ve got any questions, by all means leave a comment or email me, I’ll try and reply as soon as possible but it may take some time depending on university workload.