X31 help needed

[georgevelentzas]

Hello everyone,

i could use some help with sorting out my laptop's slowness.
i did some research on the net to find some info but could get nowhere, so i registered with you guys to hopefully get somewhere.

I just dissassembled and cleaned my X31 and discovered that although i have no large folders or programs my HD has only 3.5GB free space!! (total capacity 40GB)

I have the suspicion that the cache is probably overflowing and my registry is a mess but due to the lack of free space i cannot perform defrag.

So i could use anyone's wisdom on how to clear/sort the above issues,

Many thanks in advance,

George

[dr_st]

Get a tool called SpaceMonger - it will display to you graphically what takes up space and how much.

[jronald]

You should be able to defrag, but it will take many, many passes to do the job. If you could move some of the files off, either to a USB/Compact Disc or CF card, it would be much faster.
You can also use Disc Cleanup, from windows to help.

Ron

[rkawakami]

If it's a matter of trying to recover some free disk space in order to run a defrag, then you could try these things:

- assuming that your system is Windows XP and you have the System Restore function enabled (usually the default), then several GB could be taken up by these files. System Restore periodically saves some important operating system files that are used in case you need to revert back from some (unintended) changes. They are arranged by chronological order and depending upon the size of the restore folder, can hold system settings going back a few months. You can easily delete the oldest files by doing this: Right-click the "My Computer" icon on the desktop or from the Start Menu and click the "System Restore" tab. Verify that the "Turn off System Restore" checkbox is NOT checked (this means it's enabled), then drag the slider towards the Min end of the scale. I would recommend that you leave at least a minimum of 1GB of space. Click the "Apply" button and the oldest files will be deleted.
- delete all of the cached files from your web browser(s). Each browser has different ways of clearing the cache, but generally you click on the Tools/Options menu and then poke around the General or Privacy tabs. I would NOT delete any of the "cookies" unless you know what you're doing. These files typically hold login credentials (like your username) or contents of shopping baskets.

[georgevelentzas]

If it's a matter of trying to recover some free disk space in order to run a defrag, then you could try these things:

- assuming that your system is Windows XP and you have the System Restore function enabled (usually the default), then several GB could be taken up by these files. System Restore periodically saves some important operating system files that are used in case you need to revert back from some (unintended) changes. They are arranged by chronological order and depending upon the size of the restore folder, can hold system settings going back a few months. You can easily delete the oldest files by doing this: Right-click the "My Computer" icon on the desktop or from the Start Menu and click the "System Restore" tab. Verify that the "Turn off System Restore" checkbox is NOT checked (this means it's enabled), then drag the slider towards the Min end of the scale. I would recommend that you leave at least a minimum of 1GB of space. Click the "Apply" button and the oldest files will be deleted.
- delete all of the cached files from your web browser(s). Each browser has different ways of clearing the cache, but generally you click on the Tools/Options menu and then poke around the General or Privacy tabs. I would NOT delete any of the "cookies" unless you know what you're doing. These files typically hold login credentials (like your username) or contents of shopping baskets.

Thanks guys,
I'll try your tips and see what happens.

George

[Neil]

If the above suggestions don't do it for you...some people recommend a fresh install of Windows every year or so. While I don't go to that extreme, I have found that a fresh new install is the easiest way to restore performance. Just back up all the data you want to keep first, then format the drive and start over. You'll be amazed at the difference.

[fschwep]

In addition to what rkawakami says - very good advice that - you can also do the following: set the virtual memory in windows (the hidden file on your harddisk used by Windows as an extension of RAM) to one fixed amount. Yo need to go into System-Advanced-Performance-Advanced-Virtual memory. Set it for 'personalized' and choose the same maximum size as the minimum (typically this will be somewhere between 1 and 2 GB. This way it will remain one file taking up the same physical location on your harddisk, instead of changing size all the time. By itself this will make your computer a bit faster.
For cleaning up and defragging I would advise CCleaner and Defraggler respectively, both free tools from Piriform. CCleaner allows you to clean up a lot of superfluous stuff, and you can set it to keep cookies, passwords etc. so you don't loose anything vital.
If Windows XP has been updated multiple times (servicepacks installed etc.) a lot of uninstall files may be left on the harddisk, in the C:\Windows directory as a whole load of subdirectories with names like $NTUNinstallblabla... (you may need to set your viewing options to show hidden and system files and directories for this). After the installation of XP SP3 on my X31, there were 120 such uninstall subdirectories in Windows! I guess that once you are pretty sure that it all works, you can erase those...
Once you have cleaned out some crud, Defraggler does a very good job of defragging your harddisk and will also tell you how healthy it is. You can also choose to defrag selected files and see which are the truly huge ones. Things like e-mail programs with years of messages plus attachment files still stored in their archives become huge space hogs. If you have a lot of that, some cleaning there may be a good idea too.

[cadillacmike68]

If the above suggestions don't do it for you...some people recommend a fresh install of Windows every year or so. While I don't go to that extreme, I have found that a fresh new install is the easiest way to restore performance. Just back up all the data you want to keep first, then format the drive and start over. You'll be amazed at the difference.

A good registry clean and de-frag, along with the other clean-ups are just as effective. If one re-installs, they have to do EVERY winblows update along with every driver update, not to mention all the applications needing to be re-installed. That can take a week.