Hello All.  If you missed the first part of this article, go here Hard Drive Maintenance to Fix a Slow Computer – Part I to get caught up.  Today I want to tell you about a fantastic free tool called CCleaner.  Up to this point, I have shown you the various tools that are built into Windows that allows you to fix a computer running slow.  Now, were are going to download a tool that is great for cleaning up all the junk and it also can clean up your registry.  To start, goto www.ccleaner.com and click the “Download CCleaner Now” link to get the free program.  Once you have downloaded the program, double-click on the downloaded file to extract it and install the program.

When you start CCleaner, you will see a screen like the one below:

CCleaner - Cleans out PC and Registry

For the typical computer user, leaving the setting to default does a great job of cleaning your computer but you could scroll down and select even more areas to clean up.  Once you have decided on what you would like to clean, click the “Analyze” button and watch CCleaner go to work compiling how much room it can save you on your hard drive after cleaning.  If you have a pc running slow, this program will really help by cleaning out all the junk files that your computer really doesn’t need.  I personally like to run this program before I do virus scans so my computer doesn’t take a year and a half because of all the junk files.

Now that CCleaner is through analyzing your computer, go ahead and click the “Run Cleaner” button and the program will do the job for you and free up some disk space.  A slow computer problem can be a thing of the past if we just remember to do a little maintenance from time to time.

Well, that was easy.  Now our computer is rid of a bunch of useless files.  We next want to run the Registry Cleaner part of the program.  A lot of times when I hear “computer working slow”, “computer so slow” or “Why is my computer so slow?”, I think of all the things that can be done to fix these problems and a registry cleaner (free one – I might add) is a step in the right direction.  Installing and uninstalling programs often makes the Windows registry a little chunky and sometimes entries are left behind when programs are uninstalled.  You need a registry cleaner to go in, analyze the situation and clean it all up.  CCleaner’s Registry Cleaner does just that.

While you still have CCleaner open, click on the “Registry” button and then click “scan for issues”.  Before any changes are made, CCleaner will ask you if you want to back up your registry – DO IT.  Just in case.  I have never had a problem, but it only takes a second to back up the registry.  Once it’s finished scanning, leave all the items checked and click “Fix selected issues” and then click “Fix all Selected Issues”.  When it finishes fixing those issues, you need to have it scan again because cleaning those registry settings may have created more registry problems.  So, scan again and clean.  It may take a couple times to clean it completely.  When there are no more issues, close the program and you are done.

Now that we have removed programs, cleaned out the computer, fixed hard drive errors and cleaned the registry, it is time to defragment the hard drive.  We need to defragment our hard drives because as we install/uninstall programs and create/delete files our computers continually moves files around on the hard drive to make room but there are always gaps in the files.  We use the defragment tool to organize the files back in order which allows the computer to access the files quicker and in turn becomes an answer to the fix my slow computer problem.

To use defragment, click Start -> All Programs -> Accessories -> System Tools -> Disk Defragmenter.  When the program starts, select the drive you want to defragment (which is normally the C: Drive) and click the “Analyze” button to get a graphical look at your fragmentation status.  A lot of red like the one in the image below means you need to Defragment your hard drive.

Defragment your hard drive

Press the “Defragment” button and away it goes.  It could take some time to do this, so take a break for now.  When complete, you may want to run it again to make sure it completed the job.

Well, that raps this post up.  I hope it was helpful (fixing slow computer).  Leave question/comments in the comment box.

Take it easy,

Steve