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As you install and uninstall numerous programs, add many files and documents, and continually browse the Internet, your hard drive becomes saturated with files. Some of these are important files, but many are just junk or obsolete files which only take up space on the hard drive.
These useless files must be removed in order to free up space for other uses. This will not only make room for some new programs and files but will also improve the performance of your computer.
The latest hard drives nowadays have enormous amounts of storage space. However until only recently, even top of the line computers had only 10-40 GB of hard drive space.
These days, if you purchase a new computer, you will have more than enough storage space for some time to come. If your computer is a bit older, or if you install and uninstall many programs, you should do all possible to limit the quantity of unnecessary files on your hard drive.
The Reasons For Hard Drive Overload
When you uninstall any programs, there will very commonly be a number of orphan files left on the system. Desktop icons, Quick Launch icons, and shortcuts are some of the most noticeable orphan files.
It is also quite likely that more useless files that were not uninstalled have been left behind to take up space. This causes serious cluttering of the hard drive.
Poor programming is a very common reason for these problems. Many software programmers will use install/uninstall programs for example InstallShield that have been properly developed and very well tested. If an incompetent programmer should make some modifications to the installer and thus cause damage to some of the files, or uses some other poor install/uninstall program, the chance of files being left on your system increases greatly.
You can do a search for unnecessary files and invalid registry entries manually. But, should you delete a crucial file or registry item mistakenly, you will very likely cause severe problems.
Some programmers will leave files on your hard drive intentionally. This very often happens when you get a trial version of some software program and the programmer wants to make certain that you cannot reinstall the program and lengthen the trial. Some orphan files, you will find, are just settings used to configure a program when you upgrade it to a newer version.
Improper computer shutdown or crashes during an install/uninstall process are another common cause of orphan files being left behind.
The Prevention and Removal Of Unnecessary Files
It is definitely not possible to prevent all cases of orphan files being left behind on your hard drive. You can however curtail the problem to some extent by taking proper precautions.
1. Always use the Add/Remove Programs feature of the Windows operating system. Click on START-> Control Panel and double-click-> Add Remove Programs. Then, pick the program you wish to uninstall, from the list shown, and click on Remove. Follow the instructions onscreen to finish the uninstall.
2. Some programs are not on the Add/Remove programs list. To uninstall these, Click on Start and view the program list. Then open the submenu of the program you want to uninstall. A shortcut, for example Uninstall Your Program, may be found in the list sometimes. Click on this and uninstall the program.
If the uninstall shortcut is not to be seen in the Start menu, you can perform a search for the folder where the program files are kept. Search for the uninstall file in that folder and double click it to start the program uninstall.
3. If your PC crashes or is improperly shut down during a program uninstall, you should reinstall the program immediately and start the uninstall process once again.
You can buy some uninstall software programs which are very efficient, and will make it easy to ascertain that the computer is kept free of unnecessary files and invalid registry data entries.
We also strongly recommend downloading a registry cleaner from the internet. You should use this regularly to scan the registry and remove all invalid and obsolete entries.
We tested most of the popular registry repair tools and found that one of them was much superior to most of the others. In fact it found and removed up to 50% more registry errors than did some of the other registry cleaner tools. This is the program we have installed on our own computers to keep them running smoothly and at top speed.
