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

I will go over the following Free Tools which will help in the process of fixing a slow computer:

• Disk Cleanup
• Scan Disk
• Defrag
• CCleaner

When your hard drive begins to run out of disk space, you will notice your computer slowing down and it’s probably time to do a little maintenance.  First, you really need to go through your computer and remove files and programs that you no longer use.  To remove programs you no longer use, click on the Start Button -> Control Panel -> Add or Remove Programs and remove any programs you no longer use.  These programs may be old games you don’t play any more or maybe you have trial versions of programs you no longer need.  Don’t remove programs you are unsure of.  You can always do a Google search to find out what a program is and whether you need it on your computer.

Now that the old programs are removed, lets run Disk Cleanup.  Click on the Start Button -> All Programs – > Accessories -> System Tools -> Disk Cleanup.  When you click on Disk Cleanup, it will start to scan your computer files that are no longer need and when done it will show you a report of how much space it can free up.

Disk Cleanup

As you can see in the image above, this computer has 9 gigs (WOW!!) of disk space that can be freed up by using this tool.  You can scroll through the list and place a check mark next to the items you would like removed from your computer.  These files are mainly going to be files in the Temp directories or old compressed files.  These file are ok to remove.  The next step would be to press the “OK” button and let your computer clean up the hard drive for you.  It’s a good idea to set a maintenance schedule and run this program about once a month.

Now that the computer has been cleaned up a bit, lets scan the hard drive for errors.  As a hard drive ages, it can develop bad sectors which could cripple your computer if the bad sector is where windows system files are stored, so it’s a good idea to scan your hard drive for errors every couple of months.  To start the scan disk program, double-click you “My Computer” icon.  Then, right-click on the C: Drive (local disk C) and from the menu that pops up pick “Properties”.  Now, click on the Tools tab and then click the “Check Now” button in the “Error Checking” section.  This will start the program and bring you to the disk options menu.  Check both boxes like the image below:

Scan Disk - Check both boxes to fix errors and sectors

This Scan Disk program needs to run in Dos mode to completely check your hard drive without interfering with Windows so the program will tell you that it will start the next time the computer is rebooted.  Close all of your programs and go ahead and reboot now to run the hard drive scan.  When your computer reboots, it will come to a blue screen that goes through a number of steps for scanning your hard drive for errors which could help in the process to fix slow pc.  Once it is complete, the computer will boot into Windows like normal.

In my next post, “Slow Computer Fix: Part II“, I will discuss the other two Tools: Defrag and CCleaner.  Fixing a slow computer can be a tedious process and can require many steps, so be sure to check out How to Fix a Slow Computer – Part I and How to Fix a Slow Computer – Part II.

Take it easy,

Steve