Some Windows programs are like untidy guests and leave old files scattered about the place. Others clean up after themselves but their good intentions may be interrupted by system crashes. Either way, after a few months, your C: drive may contain so much litter it is worth cleaning up.
Before you go any further, make sure you have back-up copies of essential files, restart your PC, and do not run any programs. Programs often create files and/or write to the hard drive, which may interfere with some of the following routines.
1) Windows 98/Me includes a clean-up utility, so use it. Go to Start|Programs|Accessories|System Tools and select Disk Cleanup. Click OK to clean up the C: drive. A tabbed dialogue box will appear (below).
2) Tick the directories you want the program to empty. Temporary Internet Files and the Recycle Bin are the main ones. Click OK to do it, and Yes to confirm.
3) Disk Cleanup removes temporary files from the Temp folder, but there may be hundreds or even thousands stashed elsewhere. To find them, go to Start|Find|Files or Folders and search the root C: drive. Type *.tmp in the Named box and click the button for Find Now. [Note, if you cannot see any .tmp extensions, open Windows Explorer, select View|Folder Options, click on the View tab, and select the radio button that says Show all files. Also make sure there is no tick in the box that says Hide file extensions for known file types.]
4) The Find utility will now show a list of all the temporary *.tmp files on C. Select all the ones you want to delete and press the delete key. (Look carefully: there may be some you want to keep.) Close the Find utility (above).
5) Run Internet Explorer, select Tools|Internet Options, and click the middle button, Delete Files. This will clear out the Temporary Internet Files folder. Also tick the check box for Delete all offline content if you want to remove stored pages. Click OK twice and close the browser.
6) You might suppose that by now the C:\Windows\ Temporary Internet Files folder would be empty. Well, you have deleted its contents twice. Check it manually (below left) or by right-clicking it and selecting Properties and you will find this is not the case. It will probably contain dozens or hundreds of "cookies", the visiting cards left by websites; an index.dat file; and copies of any number of files you have downloaded. There could be a few megabytes or even hundreds of megabytes of stuff. You can select and delete some of these files manually, but Windows will not let you delete files it considers are still in use. However, you can delete them from the underlying disk operating system, MS-DOS.
7) If there is anything in the Recycle Bin, empty it now.
8) Select Start|Shut Down, select Restart in MS-DOS mode, and click OK. When your PC restarts, the screen should now be black with a cursor showing the C: \WINDOWS> prompt.
Carefully type the following (it includes a tilde which may be the key to the left of 1): deltree tempor~1
Press Enter and then Y to confirm. If there were lots of files in the temporary Internet Files folder, this will take a long time. When it has finished deleting, switch off your PC and restart it. Windows will notice that some essential files and folders are missing, and will create new ones.
9) To check that all is well, go to Start|Programs|Accessories|System Tools, select Scandisk, and click the Start button. This utility will check all your files and folders and deal with any errors.
10) Now you have cleared out a lot of rubbish, there will be gaps in the data scattered all over your hard drive. To put it in order, go back to the System Tools directory and select Disk Defragmenter. Click OK to start it on your C: drive. If you want to watch it in action, click the button marked Show Details.
Each coloured block represents a disk sector, and clicking Legend provides a key. Do not do anything with your PC until it has finished.
