I was wondering is there a way to clean up your computer? I want to find and get rid of all software and programs that I do not use any more. I have uninstalled them and removed them that way but I know there are hidden files and junk somewhere else. Do I need to get software for this or is there a manual way? Or can it even be done?

Thank you and Kind regards,

datalinx1

CCleaner – Removes unused and temporary files from your system.

tryn Ccleaner v1.27.260 at Ccleaner.com, which is a very nice garbage remover

As its not a tip or tweak .. I'm moving the thread to windows 2000/xp section.

My daughter borrowed my computer when hers broke down.. While she had it she loaded her software from her office .. Windows XP Pro, & Office 2003 Pro.. I had tried to get the updates for the software ,, BUT cause I don't have the #'s I can't get any updates.. If I purchase new software myself Can I download it over the existing?? Will it cause me any problems?? Should I get Full versions or Upgrade versions w/ Sp2?? As you can tell I'm not too sure of what I'm doing.. If I purchase XP PRO That will take care of the windows situation.. Correct????? Then shoul I get a Office 2003 Pro or JUst the Office 2003 Standard?? Can Anybody please Help me .. I have tried working with Microsoft tech ,But he don't answer any of my questions directly ,, Please Help..
Thanks
Jack ( mumbud )

I am a freak for cleaning my PC of garbage...I think I have tried every concievable proggie dedicated to this noble purpose.

Just to give you an idea of what you have going on in there and how big things are there is this awesome free program called windirstat.exe. I believe that you can get it on download.com or through PC World. It goes through your entire hard drive and makes a map of color coded squares showing every single thing on your computer and the size of the square gives you an idea of how much space something is taken. Not to mention you have all the stats accessible about 10 different ways. It really gives you perspective of what is hogging up space in the RECYCLER and your temp files. If you see some stuff taking up lots of room graphically all you have to do is point your mouse and it lets you know what it is where it is and how big it is, as well as what percentage of the parent directory it is taking up. Use the right click option to go to it in explorer or clean it up. There are also all kinds of nifty helps that assist in tidying up your hard drive.

If you want a great all in one program that costs about 19.95 but is indispensible and something you will use over and over again I would invest in System Mechanic 8. The only thing I cannot stand about it is that it "analyzes" the state of the pc daily so I disabled it in its own remove start up program folder.

It does everything from cleaning up spyware, backing up registry, compacting registry, cleaning off the deleted files that sometimes sit on your disc until you write over them, tells you when to defragment, cleans out all the history, temp, and tracks stuff as you like or on a schedule, cleans out broken shortcuts, deletes files permanently, keeps track of your firewall and virus programs (comes with its own if you want as well), finds and fixes errors in the disk surface, reformats, creates back up and boot discs, and will automatically at a touch do all this and more for you. Also optimizes internet connection, lets you tweak settings extremely easily, lets you decide what starts at boot and what starts when you want it to, lets you know when something is starting illegally, has a great process explorer with a killer for killing processes as well (also tells you what all those processes actually do in a way anyone can understand, and rates them as necessary, unecessary, bad, recommended, user defined so you can shut down all that stuff you dont use and save that memory for more worthy actions) It just has so many nifty things you can do to make your computer run much smoother, and cleans everything up even if you lost the uninstaller!
Best part is, it saves your settings before every step so that if something gets removed that you realize you cannot part with--it will restore it to before that step ever happened.
I know I forgot about 75% of the fun but you will love playing with this.
Go to iolo.com and try it for 30 days or more I cant remember.

Another nifty and simple program is 12 ghosts. Each pac man ghost (more than twelve) has its own little function and you can activate them by a main menu board. The clean up ghost along with a few others are free but I believe the whole set is shareware. Totally old school but effective.

Honestly if you go to tucows.com (like an ad free download.com) and check out optimizing programs, cleaning programs, registry cleaners, spyware cleaners (get two different to be sure) you will have a large list of freeware programs to try out and see what fits.

Personally I would rather pay the twenty bucks for a one stop shop that has it all and does it all for me on a schedule, as well as is able to UNDO it just in case instead of a dozen programs that I would have to run individually on a weekly basis.

Have you called both microsoft and the manufactuer of the computer and told them of your situation?
What you can do is if you do buy the newer software (it has to be newer than what was in the computer before) it wont matter what was in the computer beforehand as long as you dont downgrade. For whatever reason Microsoft will not allow you to put an older version over a newer unless you are able to completely wipe the drives. Dell has built in instructions that strictly forbid downgrades.
What make is the computer and when did you purchase? Were there disks included? Reason being is that if you are still running the old programs the serial numbers should be accessible from within the computer. but as your daughter used a new program from work you may be out of luck. If you have a Dell that is fairly new you can restore the entire computer to factory settings by accessing the built in Norton Ghost restore software. If not you should just format the main drive by using the system tools. You usually can do this from the smaller partition if your computer was prepackaged with programming.

This question is hard due to the fact that it relies on the make.
You do not have to get Pro btw as long as the program itself is not older. you can get standard across the board as long as the version is from the same time or newer.

You should really be raising hell with the manufacturer. Tell them that you demand a solution to reformatting your PC with the factory settings intact. they should have some way to do this for you. I can't imagine a computer going out with Windows on it and absolutely no way for you to restore it to factory settings. Dont let them hang up without giving you a solution. Just dont say that a new version is on the PC. Just say that you want to restore your computer to the factory settings and erase all the stuff on it. Tell them that you want to completely format the drives and start from scratch and you dont know how. there should be a built in function for this. You will lose the stuff your daughter put in but you will be able to update.

Worst case scenario, there are other options...but you should know how to reformat your pC anyway. All PC's need a fresh start every so often.

use disk clean up, aus logics disk defrag and registry defrag (aus logics programs may be downloaded free off the auslogics website)

i used the nice one call ccleaner this is free but very usefull try it and tell me
this link have nice programe http://filehippo.com/

You could use Agent Ransack, a free search utility, to find then manually delete any files/folders remaining of uninstalled apps.

Regseeker has a nice registry search function that will find and show all reg items at once.

I wouldn't use Regseeker's reg cleaning function as it's a bit aggressive.

Agent Ransack

Regseeker