Volume hard drives Every year there are more and more data for both computers and laptops, but for some reason they are still always filled with data for the majority of users. Lack of space has been an eternal problem since the existence of the first computer. And if you use solid state drive(SSD), which offers much less space, then messages about lack of disk space are almost like home for you.

Run Disk Cleanup

operating room Windows system includes a built-in tool that allows you to delete temporary files and other system files that are not of much interest. To open the tool Disk Cleanup, click right click mouse on one of your hard drives in a window Computer or Conductor and select Properties.

Click the button Disk Cleanup in the window Properties: Your disk.

After a short analysis, a window will open Disk Cleanup.

Disk Cleanup

Alternatively you can simply type Disk Cleanup on the menu Start.


Among the files to be deleted, you can delete downloaded program files, temporary Internet files, recycle bin files, thumbnail images, and more. Select the types of files you want to delete by checking each box and click OK. I advise you to select all items whose volume exceeds 10 MB.

Clicking the button Clean system files in the same window, you can see additional items that can also be deleted, for example, memory dump files for system errors, files Windows Defender and others. Sometimes this is the only way to remove much more files Disk Cleanup tool than simply deleting temporary files without clicking the Clean up system files button.

Cleaning system files

Removing Capacitive Applications

Removing heavy programs will free up additional space. In the snap Programs and components Control Panels, click on a column Size to organize everything installed applications descending in order of occupied space. Analyze and remove large applications that you do not use.


Uninstalling programs

If you don't see the column Size, press the button Additionally and select view Table.


If you are using Windows 10, you can also open Options using Start > Options > System. Next, open the item Applications and Features. Sort apps by size and analyze the apps you don't need.


Windows Settings 10

Unlike equipment Programs and components window Options will allow you to remove applications from the Windows Store, including if you are using a Windows 10 tablet.

Disk space analysis

To find out what exactly is taking up space on your hard drive, you need to use an analysis program hard drive. This application scans your hard drive and then displays the result, showing which files and folders take up the most space. There are a lot of such applications, but I will use WinDirStat, which can be downloaded from the official website.

After installing WinDirStat, select which local drives you want to scan. The scanning process can last from one to several hours depending on the number and capacity of disks. The scan result will show which folders and files are taking up the most space.


WinDirStat

Make sure that you do not delete important system files, only delete your personal files. If the Program Files folder takes up a huge amount of space, analyze and remove unused applications. WinDirStat will tell you how much space each one takes up installed program, even if the Programs and Features snap-in in the Control Panel showed an empty result for some programs.

Clearing temporary files

Built-in disk cleanup Windows tool very useful, although it does not delete temporary files third party applications. For example, it will not clear temporary Firefox files or Chrome, which can use up gigabytes of free hard drive space. The same third-party browser cache is stored on the hard drive and also needs to be cleared periodically.

The browser cache saves time when re-opening websites by storing a copy of it on your hard drive. It is called cache. Thus, the cache allows you to open it today home page site from the Internet, no longer download it in its entirety tomorrow, but use its local copy. This allows you to reduce the speed of re-opening websites several times.

For a more aggressive cleaning of temporary and junk files, try CCleaner which can be downloaded. CCleaner cleans junk files various programs third-party manufacturers, and also clears temporary Windows files, which Disk Cleanup may not touch.

After installation, perform an analysis and make a decision, checking the boxes that you will delete.


CCleaner

Analysis for duplicate files

Another important way to free up additional free space on your hard drive is to find and delete duplicate files. There are simply a lot of applications for this purpose, paid and free. I will use the trial version Duplicate Cleaner Pro, which you can download.


Duplicate Cleaner Pro

Reducing system recovery space

If System Restore consumes a lot of hard drive space for the restore points it creates, you can reduce the amount of disk space allocated to System Restore.

Try to set the optimal size of disk space for recovery points so that you are not left without them and do not add extra points that are useless. So, if you often experiment with your computer, I advise you to set 5 to 10% of the disk space for recovery points. If the computer is used to view photographs from a home archive or film library, then a value not exceeding 5% will be quite sufficient.


System Restore

If the System Restore function is not important to you at all, or your priority is to free up as much disk space as possible, then System Restore can be turned off altogether by selecting Disable system protection and deleting all restore points by clicking Delete.

Disabling sleep and hibernation

The following techniques will certainly save space, but you will have to sacrifice some important ones. Windows functions. Therefore, I recommend using these methods if they may be useful to you.

  • Disabling sleep mode. When the system uses sleep mode, it saves the contents random access memory on your hard drive. This allows the current state of the system to be stored without significant power consumption. And the next time you access the computer, the system simply loads the contents of the hard drive, returning you to the state of the computer that was at the time of shutdown. Windows saves the contents of RAM to a file in the path C:\Hiberfil.sys, by default. To save hard disk space, sleep mode can be disabled completely by changing the power plan settings
  • Disable hibernation mode. Similar to disabling sleep mode, you can also turn off hibernation mode, which, unlike sleep mode, does not require electricity at all to maintain the current state of the system. And sometimes if the number and location of windows that are open in this moment matters to you, but you need to take a break, then the computer system can be sent to hibernation mode. Returning to your computer a day or a week later, you will find that when you started the computer, the system loaded exactly the state in which you paused.


Here are a few ways that will allow you to significantly reduce the size of your disk space and free up additional space. If you know other ways to increase free hard drive space in Windows, please leave your comments.

No matter what size of drive C: you set, no matter how regularly you clean your computer of debris, sooner or later you will definitely encounter this annoying window at the bottom right: “There is not enough space on drive C...”. About the reasons for this error in Windows 7 and ways to increase free space on system disk will be discussed below.

Causes

So, there are several factors that influence the amount of free space on system drive C. The most obvious one is . However, they “eat up” much more space on the system partition. applications and Windows services that you don't even know about. This includes the browser cache, memory dump files, hibernation mode, and so on, and so on, and so on. No matter how often you perform the standard procedure disk cleanup, it will still be constantly “clogged”. Below we will try to give an exhaustive number of solutions that can significantly free up disk space.

First, let's start with the most obvious way to solve the problem - the standard disk cleanup procedure. To launch the utility, open Computer, right-click on drive C, select Properties -> Disk Cleanup.

Wait while the program calculates the possible amount of freed space. In the window that opens, check absolutely all the boxes. It will be displayed at the bottom right volume of freed space. However, the specified number will not always correspond to the actual amount of freed disk space. This happens because some programs still use temporary files in the background and deleting them is currently impossible.

Click “OK” and in a moment your system disk will be replenished with some free space. If you are not satisfied with the result, move on to the next step.

Cleaning up user files

User files— files and folders with files created by you on the system disk. What are the possible places for “garbage accumulation” on the C: drive? First of all, this Desktop.

To find out how much space files take up on your Desktop, open your Computer and go to Drive C -> Users -> [Username] and find the folder Desktop. Call its properties and see the amount of memory occupied. Ideally, the number should be in kilobytes, not megabytes or, God forbid, gigabytes. Try to make sure that they remain on the desktop LABEL ONLY the programs you need. Move music, movies and other garbage to other local drives.

The next "garbage dump" is folders "Video", "Documentation", "Images" And "Music" In chapter "Libraries" Computer window (in the left panel). Carefully check the contents of these directories and, if necessary, move files to other drives. Storing information in the specified places, in addition, can significantly slow down the system due to fragmentation files.

So, why stop there, let's make room further.

Clearing temporary files

Much more space on the system partition is occupied by files that you don’t even know about. This temporary files, created by almost all running applications. Programs for working with computers especially like to “litter” large data sets- video, audio, all kinds of archivers, etc. Take, for example, the same WinRar, which, when opened, unpacks archives into temporary directories on the C: drive.

So, there are two main folders for temporary files. They are located at the following addresses:

C:\Windows\Temp

C:\Users\[username]\AppData\Local\Temp\

All you need is to empty these folders. The contents of the first one can be deleted in the usual way by using Computer. The second directory is usually hidden from the user, so you can get to it by manually entering the path in the Explorer address bar, or by installing the program Total Commander and turning on display of hidden/system files ( Configuration -> Settings -> Panel contents -> Show hidden/system files ). After deleting files, do not forget Empty trash.

These are the main, most obvious ways to clean up a disk. Now let's talk about additional measures that are not necessary, but with their help you can replenish your free space with gigabytes.

Disabling Windows Update

The purpose was always unclear to me Windows updates. Huge amounts of data that often have no practical use. By default, it is enabled on the computer Automatic update. This means that almost every day the amount of free space is reduced by 200-300 MB.

Due to our problem, we, of course, will not delete already installed updates, but we will free up a couple of gigabytes downloaded to the computer, but not yet installed. But first we need to disable the function automatic update. To do this we call Computer Properties(right-click on the Computer icon on the Desktop and select the appropriate item). In the Properties window go to Center Windows updates-> Setting parameters. Select from the drop-down list "Don't check for updates".

Disabling Hibernation and deleting the hiberfil.sys file

Hibernation- this is the so-called Sleep mode, a state when the contents of RAM are written to a file hiberfil.sys on the system disk, and the computer itself turns off completely. After switching on occurs reverse process and The computer starts, keeping all applications that were running open.

Depending on the amount of RAM, the hiberfil.sys file may have different size, ranging from 1-4 GB. You can sacrifice the Hibernation feature, but you will save a lot of disk space.

To disable Hibernation and delete the hiberfil.sys file, follow these steps:

  1. Go to Control Panel -> Power Options -> Sleep Mode Settings;
  2. In the dropdown list « Put your computer into sleep mode" select « Never" and save the changes;
  3. Open Start, enter the word "cmd" and in the search results run Command line on behalf of the Administrator (right-click on the icon "cmd" and select "Run as Administrator")
  4. In the window, enter the command powercfg -h off and press ENTER.

After a reboot, there will obviously be more free space on the C: drive.

Conclusion

In conclusion, I would like to add that it is enough effective way Clear free space on drive C: is clearing your browser cache. You can find out how to do this online, but keep in mind that after some time this garbage will appear on the disk again, so do not forget to clean it periodically.

Try to maintain order on your Computer and then you will always know what, where and how much space on your disk takes up. As always, we hope that the article was useful. We write comments, like, repost on social media. networks and share with friends!

During its operation, the operating system creates a lot of temporary data that is stored on disk (usually drive C) in the form of files and registry entries. These can be files from update packages, archivers, shadow copies, content downloaded from the Internet, etc. They behave in a similar way third party programs, for example, browsers that cache website data. Some temporary files are deleted automatically after a certain time, others remain on the disk until they are forcibly deleted.

If the user does not regularly maintain and clean up the C drive, the free space on it becomes less and less, to the point that the disk eventually ends up filled to capacity with temporary files, which precludes further writing of any data to it. reduces its performance. There are two ways out of this situation - either increase the size of the system partition at the expense of the user volume, or perform a comprehensive cleanup of it, which is more preferable. Let's see how to free up space on your local C drive in Windows 7/10.

What can you delete if the disk is full?

The system volume contains many important files that ensure normal Windows operation, so deep cleaning should be approached with the utmost care. What can you delete from the C drive to free up space and not disrupt the system? All its contents can be divided into three groups. The first includes files that can be deleted without any fear. The second consists of files, the deletion of which, although it will not harm the system, can still cause certain problems under some circumstances. The third group includes files that cannot be deleted, as this can make programs and the system inoperable. You can clean up drive C without negative consequences by deleting:

  • Cart Contents.
  • Library catalogues.
  • Folders and Downloaded Program Files in the Windows directory.
  • Cache of browsers and some third-party programs.
  • Icon sketches.
  • Logs and memory dumps for system errors.
  • Old Chkdsk utility files.
  • Bug reports.
  • Files created by the Windows debugger.

With some caution, you can delete shadow copies () created during the installation of updates and stored in backups, files from previous system installations (Windows.old folder), not necessary components and applications, folders of uninstalled programs in the ProgramData, Program Files and Roaming directories, MSOCache folder Microsoft Office. If you do not use Quick Start, you can delete the file hiberfil.sys in the root of drive C, having previously disabled these functions in the settings. It is acceptable, but not recommended, to delete the swap file pagefile.sys. Other files and folders on drive C cannot be deleted so as not to disrupt the operation of the system.

Cleaning junk and temporary files using Windows

First, let's see how to clear drive C of unnecessary files in Windows 7/10 using the most operating system. Windows has a built-in utility for these purposes. cleanmgr.exe, which can be launched either through the properties of the partition being cleaned or through the “Run” dialog box. After the utility scans the disk for outdated files, check the boxes on the “Disk Cleanup” tab and click “OK.”

If you click the “Clean up system files” button, reports, device driver packages, error dumps and, additionally, restore points, with the exception of the most recent one, will become available for deletion.

For a deeper and more thorough cleaning of drive C from garbage, you can use the built-in console utilities Dism And vssadmin. The first allows you to delete temporary data from the WinSxS folder, including backups created before installing Windows updates. To do this, use the following commands executed in the CMD console running as administrator:

  1. DISM.exe /online /Cleanup-Image /StartComponentCleanup
  2. DISM.exe /online /Cleanup-Image /SPSuperseded
  3. vssadmin delete shadows /all /quiet

The first command does the same thing as the cleanmgr.exe utility, only more thoroughly.

The second deletes all backup update packages from the WinSxS folder.

The third command can delete all restore points, including the last one.

However, you should use these tools with caution, since after executing the indicated commands, you will no longer be able to roll back the system to a working state or a previous version.

Note: Before cleaning the WinSxS folder, it is recommended to set its true size, thereby making sure that it really needs cleaning. To do this you need to do command line team Dism.exe /Online /Cleanup-Image /AnalyzeComponentStore and compare the actual size of the component store with the size indicator in the Explorer properties.

After upgrading Windows to more new version a folder appears at the root of drive C Windows.old, which can take up significant disk space.

The contents of this directory are copies of the system files of the previous installation Windows versions. If you are determined not to return to old version system, the Windows.old folder can be deleted. This is done again either using cleanmgr.exe or using the command line. In the first case, you need to find and mark the “Previous” item on the “Advanced” tab. Windows installations", in the second - execute in the console running as administrator cmd command rd /s /q c:/windows.old.

You can get a little extra space on the C drive by removing unused components, the same ones that are accessible through the classic Add/Remove Programs applet.

The standard Dism utility is also used here. To select and uninstall unused Windows component, run the following two commands in the CMD console running with elevated rights:

  1. DISM.exe /Online /English /Get-Features /Format:Table
  2. DISM.exe /Online /Disable-Feature /featurename:NAME /Remove

The first command displays a list of all components in the system, the second deletes the selected element. IN in this example its name must be substituted for the NAME line element.


Manual removal of programs and files

Except for universal ones Windows applications 8.1 and 10, almost all desktop programs are installed in the folder Program Files. If a program is no longer needed, it should be deleted so that it does not take up disk space, but this must be done either using a standard uninstaller or using special third-party programs. However, after uninstalling applications, folders with configuration files may remain on the disk, the weight of which can reach several hundred megabytes. Such data must be deleted manually.

Let's say you deleted from Microsoft computer Office or Skype and you also want to get rid of all their “tails” remaining on the C drive. To do this, carefully check the Program Files and ProgramData directories in the root of drive C, as well as the folders C:/Users/Username/AppData. If the folder name matches the name remote application, it can be deleted.

The AppData folder is a little more complicated. This hidden directory contains three subfolders: Local, LocalLow and Roaming. The first stores files created during the operation of various programs. You cannot clear it entirely, as this will most likely lead to the loss of saved application settings, however, half-empty folders of uninstalled programs can be completely safely deleted. You can also safely clear the contents of the folder located in it Temp.

The same applies to the LocalLow and Roaming folders; it is permissible to delete from them only those directories that belonged to previously uninstalled applications.

Note: By clearing the contents of the Local, LocalLow and Roaming folders, you lose user settings and data saved in their cache. For example, after deleting its folders in your user profile, you will lose your current messenger settings and part of your message history.

As for deleting universal applications, they are uninstalled regular means the system itself or the CCleaner program, which will be discussed below. You can also transfer some universal applications from drive C to drive D, if they support this feature.

Transferring desktop programs to another volume is also possible; for these purposes there is special utility SteamMover, which you can download from the developer’s website www.traynier.com/software/steammover.

Using CCleaner

Many novice users are interested in how to delete unnecessary files from drive C using third-party programs, as well as which of these programs are more effective and safe in this regard. These can be recommended CCleaner– simple, fast, convenient, and most importantly safe disk cleaner and Windows registry. This program allows you to delete temporary data from the Internet and Windows itself, the contents of the thumbnail cache and DNS, Index.dat files, memory dumps, fragments of chkdsk files, various system logs, outdated prefetch files and a lot of other unimportant data.

With CCleaner you can clean up invalid entries system registry, optimize, enable, disable or remove browser extensions, analyze the contents of hard drives, search for duplicates and, of course, uninstall unnecessary applications, including universal ones.

CCleaner's interface is very simple, so understanding its simple functionality will not be difficult even for a novice user.

Considering, however, that the main purpose of CCleaner is still cleaning, all its additional tools have limited functionality. If your C drive is full of unknown things, and you want to find out what exactly it is, then for these purposes it is better to use specific utilities, for example, Scanner, JdiskReport or their analogues, showing more accurate information about the file structure of the media with the ability to navigate through subdirectories.

Other ways to free up space on drive C

Clearing the Driver Store

The steps described above are usually enough to free up enough space on the system volume, but what if drive C is still full? What else can you do to get additional space? One option is to clear the contents of the folder FileRepository located at C:/Windows/System32/DriverStore.

This directory contains copies of device drivers that have ever been connected to the computer, and can also store outdated versions drivers. Before deleting driver packages from the FileRepository folder, it is highly advisable to create a complete list of them and find only outdated versions in it, leaving the rest untouched. It also wouldn't hurt to create a complete copy of all drivers installed on the system. To list the DriverStore drivers in a file, run the following command in an elevated command prompt:

pnputil.exe /e > C:/drivers.log

Compare the driver versions in the list and remove only the outdated ones.

To remove the selected driver, immediately run the command in the console pnputil.exe /d oem№.inf, where № is the name of the driver in the list.

If an error appears in the console when uninstalling a driver, it means the driver is being used by the system. There is no need to touch such a component.

As an alternative to the command line, you can use free utility Driver Store Explorer, just designed to remove old unused device drivers.

Disabling hibernation

Thanks to the hibernation mode, the user can quickly return to work in running applications; on the other hand, its use requires the allocation of significant space on the system disk, slightly less than or equal to the amount of RAM. If having free space on your hard drive is a priority for you, you can disable hibernation mode by deleting the hiberfil.sys container file.

Launch the CMD console as an administrator and run the command in it powercfg -h off. Hibernation will be disabled and the bulky hiberfil.sys file will be removed.

Note: The hibernation file can be compressed by a maximum of two times with the command powercfg hibernate size 50.

Disabling the page file

In addition to other hidden system objects, there is also a file in the root of drive C that can be deleted under certain conditions. This is the swap file pagefile.sys. This file plays the role of a RAM buffer, and if an application does not have enough RAM to operate, its data is temporarily written to . Accordingly, if there is no swap file, a heavy application will slow down greatly or simply freeze while waiting for faster RAM to become available. Therefore, disabling and deleting the paging file is not recommended unless the computer has a very large amount of RAM.

If your PC has more than 10 GB of memory or you do not intend to run resource-intensive applications, you can try carefully disabling swap. To do this, open Advanced system settings and on the “Advanced” tab in the “Performance” block, click the “Options” button.

This will open another window. Switch to the “Advanced” tab, and then click the Change button in the “Virtual Memory” block.

Uncheck the “Automatically select paging file size” checkbox, turn on the “No paging file” radio button, save the settings and reboot. The pagefile.sys file will be deleted.

Removing the MSOcache folder

For users who have installed Microsoft package Office, in the root of the system volume there is hidden folder MSOcache, the weight of which can reach several gigabytes.

This folder is a cache of the office suite and contains files that may be needed for recovery Microsoft work Office in case of damage. The MSOcache folder is not involved in launching Microsoft Office or working with documents, so it can be deleted in a standard way. Just keep in mind that if Microsoft Office is damaged for some reason, you will have to restore the package installation disk with its distribution.

Compressing the contents of a system volume

You can free up some free space on drive C without deleting anything from it at all. Instead, all system files can be compressed. To do this, just open the properties of drive C, on the “General” tab, check the box “Shrink this drive to save space” and click “OK”.

To compress system files in Windows 10, you can use the function Compact OS by running one of two commands in the CMD console running as administrator:

  • compact /CompactOs:query
  • compact /CompactOs:always

The second command performs the same actions as the first, but in forced mode. It is used if you really want to shrink the system volume, and the first command rejects the operation, considering it inappropriate. The compression is completely reversible and to return file system V normal state, just execute the reverse command compact /CompactOs:never.

In addition to NTFS compression, LZX compression is available in Windows 10, but it has a number of disadvantages, which is why it is not widely used. LZX compression is applicable to read-only files and directories, but an entire system volume cannot be compressed with its help due to the risk of an unbootable system.

The problem with computer junk causes inconvenience to almost all users year after year. In this article I will tell you how to clean Local disk WITH.

If your PC has become noticeably slower, it will be useful for you to clean up unnecessary files and thereby speed up your computer.

To find out how to do it yourself correctly, read the entire article or watch the video at the end of the article.

Introduction

Many people wonder about the slow operation of their computer and spend hours searching for information on the Internet. One of the main reasons is the clutter of Local Disk C. The PC starts to work slower because it is on this disk that the operating system is located, which is responsible for all the actions performed.

As a result of the operating system files becoming clogged, we begin to notice errors in work processes and slow program responses. Imagine using a real-life example: you run in sneakers or sports shoes to improve your physical fitness. Now take a sack of potatoes over each shoulder and try to run, how’s that? I think the difference will be noticeable, the same is true on the local disk, while the empty one works quickly, a lot of garbage has accumulated and it begins to work slowly.

That is why you should at least sometimes clean up your PC and delete unnecessary files.

Clean desktop and its impact on Local Disk C

Dear friends, first I want to draw your attention to the desktop of your PC, because many do not understand how to use it correctly. And its correct condition lies in its purity.

All files and folders located on the desktop are recorded on the memory of local drive C, so think ten times before throwing music albums and new movies onto it, work correctly now, transfer all data from the desktop to Local drive D or other existing ones, this is significant will facilitate the operation of the operating system and free up the memory of drive C. If you need quick access, to some programs or files, make shortcuts for them so it will be correct.

Manually clearing temporary, unnecessary files from your computer

Before moving on to this stage, you need to understand a little that when running any programs on a computer, the operating system creates temporary files, even when you are just surfing the Internet, some of the data is recorded as temporary files.

This is actually done to speed up the work, how? Let's say you opened the Odnoklassniki website, the system recorded several large pictures from the site in a folder with temporary files, and the next time you go to Odnoklassniki, the computer does not download information from the site server, but takes several large pictures from the temporary files previously recorded in the folder.

Yes, this is useful, the folder with temporary files “swells” to such an extent that it begins to slow down the PC and most of the memory of Local Disk C is clogged, which sometimes also leads to errors.

To delete these temporary files you just need to go to the desired folder with these same temporary files and delete everything from there. By the way, don’t worry, there are no system files there and you won’t delete anything you need, feel free to go in and clean it.

To do this, go to the directory:

My computer/Local drive C/Windows/Temp

We went into this folder, circled all the files and deleted them, emptied the trash.

Analysis and removal of old, unnecessary programs, games and files

This section can be divided into two stages. The first is quite simple, it involves removing old, no longer needed games and programs. To do this, simply go to the program control panel and delete those applications that you once installed yourself; when you see familiar names, you definitely won’t get confused.

1. Go to the menu start panel management programs and components and we see the following window in front of us:

We find programs we don’t need in this window, select them and click on the remove/change button at the top, doing this one by one with each one. unnecessary application or a game. This process will also clear the memory of local drive C.

The point of the action is to identify the problematic folder or file, and for us these are objects that occupy a significant amount of memory. Not quite clear? I'll explain everything now.

We go to Local Disk C and see folders in front of us, the number may be different for everyone

Now we begin to analyze each folder in turn, first check the volume of the first folder

Our goal is to find out how much memory it takes up on the computer

We looked and saw that the folder takes up only 8.13 MB, we are not interested in this size, we are only looking for huge files that weigh from several GB.

What should I do if I don’t understand anything about file sizes?

If you have difficulty understanding the size of files or do not know how to distinguish between them, then I recommend using my online textbook: How to master a computer from scratch. In it you will find answers to all your questions.

We were a little distracted, but that’s okay, let’s continue, move on to the next folder and also check its weight until you find folders whose volume scares you. Most likely, there will be two folders: Windows and Program Files.

As soon as we have identified a folder that takes up a lot of space, we go to it and also analyze everything that is in it by determining the weight. Eventually you will find files or folders that take up a huge amount of memory on your Local Drive C, copy their name and look on the Internet what these files are and what program they are from, most likely you will be surprised how much junk you will find.

Attention, if you are a complete novice user, do not use this method, just skip it, because in the process you can remove the necessary components or programs, which will lead to disastrous circumstances.

We use the built-in capabilities of cleaning Local disks

The creators of the operating system did not forget about users and initially added Windows basic Possibilities for simplified cleaning of Local disks. This is not always effective, but knowing this method will also be useful, and it will not take much of your time.

To do this, you need to go to my computer, select the local disk to clean and right-click on it and select the properties line.

Now we will see information about the disk in front of us, we need to click on the clean disk button

You will need to wait a while until the program starts, you will see something like this:

When the program starts, you will see a window in front of you in which you need to check the boxes next to the sections that you want to clean, here I just check all the boxes and click OK.

Automatically clean the Cache and Registry using Ccleaner

Now we can relax a little, then the automatic cleaning program will work for us. It's called CCleaner, you can read how to download it correctly and from where in the article on how to clean your computer's registry. After you have installed it, launch it. Click on the cleaning section, first select the Windows section and only after that click the analysis button.

Now we will see in front of us all the files that the program can clean without causing harm to your PC, at the top where it will say analysis completed you can see approximately how much space the program will free up for you. Click the clear button

Reviving or speeding up your computer after cleaning up the mess

After you have done such a huge job, you just need to bring your computer back to life, to do this you need to put all the files on their shelves. This will speed up your computer and save you from some errors. This process is called defragmentation. I recently devoted an entire article to this, which I recommend you read.

Now it’s time to consolidate the knowledge, watch the video in which I myself go through all the stages of cleaning Local Disk C in order. Good luck friends and don’t forget to subscribe to my site’s news, the subscription is a little lower, be literate in everything!

The article was edited on March 20, 2018.

Hi all! Today we’ll look at how to free up and increase space on drive “C”. I'll show you how to remove everything unnecessary files, which clutter up your computer. You can safely delete them, because over time they begin to take up a lot of space. I will describe what these files are and how to find them in my article.

This question has been bothering me for a long time.

One day, I discovered that my disk had turned red.

I decided to check what I have installed on it? What programs? Maybe they take up a lot of space? In short, some questions. HDD I have a decent 500 GB. What do I have there? Obviously, I decided there was a lot of unnecessary and unnecessary things. And I was not mistaken.

The very first thing is to click on the “my computer” icon and select the “downloads” folder. And clean it up. These files take up a lot of space.

How to check what programs are installed on your computer:

  • you need to go to the start menu
  • Select "Control Panel" then select "Features and Programs".

And now we have them all at our fingertips.

After doing this procedure, I realized that I don’t have many programs.

I need them all. If you do a simple calculation, you don’t need to be Lobachevsky, it turns out that a third of the disk is loaded with unknown junk.

Yes, I thought...... It's time, brother, it's time to do some spring cleaning of my faithful friend and assistant.

Let's figure out where the junk on the computer comes from.

Disk space is occupied by:

  • installed programs
  • to fill folders (my desktop, documents, downloads, trash.

They are all located here, at this address C:\Users\Username\.

The browser cache also takes up a lot of space. I already wrote an article about this. You can read it. "Kesh" is used to speed up the loading of pages that you have viewed and continue to view occasionally.

The “Temp” folder is filled through your browser; temporary data is stored there. They can be safely removed. And don't worry, nothing will happen to your computer. And you can find it as follows

We type the combination “Win ​​+ R” on the keyboard. And in the window that appears, enter %temp%, then click OK.

You can get to this folder in another way.

Click on the "my computer" icon>>>C drive>>>Windows folder>>>Temp folder. And delete all data from this folder.

Next, in the same place we find another folder “Uzers”, and in it another folder with the name of your computer. I call it “Comp”. You may call it by a different name. Opening it, we find the “AppData” folder and in this folder we also find the “Temp” folder. From it you can also delete temporary files that are uselessly lying on the computer.

Below you can see such files that take up a lot of disk space up to 1.5 GB:

pagefile.sys - information about intermediate data is stored here running programs and temporary files from the Internet. That is, the speed of your computer. The browser remembers the cache of the page or program. And it loads much faster. You can clean temporary files from the Internet. These files can be found when you run Disk Cleanup. After analysis, go to the “advanced” section. Performance is what these files are. I personally didn't touch them. But they also take up a lot of space. If you don't clear the cache, a lot of garbage accumulates. Please take into account.

hiberfil.sys - hibernation folder. If you play games then you need it. Let’s say you need to go to the store, but don’t want to turn off your computer. You enable hibernation mode. I don't play games and have disabled this feature a long time ago.

How to disable hibernation.

In the start menu search bar dial in English cmd layout

In the window that appears in English. write the command C:\Windows\system32>powercfg hibernate off_ (or rather, add it after > this icon).

And thus we disable this function.

System Restore feature.

IN set time Files are being archived on your computer. Archiving is very required process on the computer. You can restore your computer system from archive files if suddenly changes occur and you want to return it to its previous state. You can also restore deleted files and folders.

You select a system restore point. These recovery points occupy a certain place. It's better to have 2 or 3 points. Since many points take up a lot of space. Imagine a recovery point is nothing more than all the programs and files located on the computer in compressed form.

If you do not pay attention and do not delete unnecessary file archives, then over time they will begin to take up a lot of space.

How to find file archives:

Start>>>programs>>>standard>>>utilities>>>system recovery.

My archives are located on drive D (this is how I determined the path of this folder from the very beginning). Here is the icon as shown in the screenshot. You need to open it, select what you don’t need and delete it.You may have this folder on drive C.

Some programs that were installed by you and unnecessarily were removed, also leaving a lot of garbage.

I get rid of trash using free program CCleaner.

She's just wonderful. Deletes the cache, cleans the registry of entries and edits it. I also use another program. It also cleans up marks well. I recommend Revo Uninstaller you can read about it.

Let's take advantage standard program disk cleaning. It is available on the computer. In order to launch it, let's go to:

“my computer” >>> drive C >>> right mouse go to properties

Let's start cleaning and wait a bit. After analysis, the system offers us additional parameters. We tick the boxes where we think necessary. And run disk cleanup. As a result of all the manipulations described in this article, I cleared 1/3 of the disk.

Such procedures are useful for your computer. So clean up the trash. And remember that this must be done constantly. About once a month. More often it is not necessary.

One more tip.

There should only be program shortcuts on the desktop. Files and folders clutter your desk and take up disk space.

Attention! If you have removed unnecessary things and the computer does not work the way you would like, you can restore the system.

To do this, you can click the checkbox in the tray. And select the system restore function.

Or go through the start menu and find the system restore folder. I wrote about this above.

I once had a situation like this where my computer booted up but the screen was black. As you can imagine, I couldn’t get into the start menu.

What to do in this case:

  • do not panic
  • When you start the computer, immediately press the F8 key. You may have to run it more than once.

You use the arrows (up or down) on your keyboard to highlight this window and press enter. It is possible that the system will boot and reboot several times. But don't panic and wait. The windows7 operating system is very smart. Everything will be restored.

If nothing works, the matter may have gone too far and you will need qualified help.

This article was written by me, taking into account my experience in this topic. Perhaps your situation is different. I don’t guarantee that my article will help you. I just outlined my work experience in this article.

All computer problems or operating system malfunctions must be approached individually. If you do not have any experience working with folders and files, it is better to entrust this work to professionals.

That's all for me. Good luck.