Freeing Up the Disk Space

If your computer has slowed down, your programs and files could be taking up too much room on your hard drive, which means it is time to free up some disk space. To do this, follow a few simple steps.

1. From the Start menu select All Programs, followed by Accessories and lastly, System Tools. Select the Disk Cleanup option.
2. When the dialog box appears, choose the drive that you want to clean up and click OK.
3. The Disk Cleanup will calculate how much space you will be able to clean up, showing you the types of files that can be deleted from your system.
4. Choose the files you want to delete by checking the boxes next to the file types. You can click on the file names to see more information about the files before deciding to delete them.
5. Click OK to delete the selected files.

Defragmenting Your Hard Drive

Regularly defragmenting your hard drive helps improve your machine’s performance, speeding up the processes it runs. Defragmenting your disk can take a few hours, so it is better to set defragmentation to run overnight.

1. From the Start menu select All Programs, followed by Accessories and lastly, System Tools. Select the Disk Defragmenteroption.
2. When the dialog box appears, click Analyze Disk button to see if your system needs defragmenting.
3. At the end of the analysis, the system will inform you whether defragmentation is needed. If it is, click Defragment Disk button.
4. The dialog box will continue to display the defragmentation progress until the process is complete. At this point the dialog box will indicate that the disk no longer needs defragmenting.

Using the System Restore Function

Downloading a program containing a virus or a similar event can cause harm to your machine, but can be reverted. To do this, you can restore your system to an earlier point in time.

1. Backup any essential files on your computer.
2. From the Start menu select All Programs, followed by Accessories and lastly, System Tools. Select the System Restore option.
3. The dialog box will appear. Depending on your version of Windows, select either Restore My Computer to an Earlier Time, Recommended Restore or Choose a Different Restore Point. Click the Next button.
4. Pick a restore point, selecting a date and time shortly before you started experiencing any issues. Click the Next button once more.
5. The computer will prepare the system restore and restart.
6. Once the machine has restarted, the dialog box will pop up informing you about the successful restoration. Click Finish to complete the task.

If your computer doesn’t start or is experiencing other serious issues, it is a good idea to get professional help with computer repair in Columbus.