Purging Hard Drive safely and easily

[TwingleMum]

I need to purge my hard drive. Its running really slow and I've never purged the hard drive. I am not a computer person. Can you explain how I can do this safely and easily?? I use windows XP and internet explorer. I use CLEAN UP! regularily also.

 

[jsmith]

By purge do you mean completely destroy all the data and the OS down to a bare drive so that it has to be reloaded-or just clean it up and compress it? there is a huge difference. Also-your hard drive is honestly likely the last reason your computer runs slow-lack of memory-paging files too small-an OS-like vista that is very resource intensive that you have upgraded to with out upgrading teh memory-pirate processess or or a virus that your Anti virus has missed are all more likely to cause you computer to be "slow" than the hard drive being full. The hard drive could also be going bad-slow performance is symptomanic of many things. However if what you want to do is in deed purge your hard drive of all data down to bare and reload it i recommond either Unishred Pro or Universal Purge Tool-these programs destroy all the data on a drive-rendering it completely unretervable-they are approved by the Us government for the destruction of classified data.

 

[TwingleMum]

HI. I just mean to clean it up not remove OS.

 

[TwingleMum]

So if my computer is running slowly are there some things I can do simply to improve how fast my computer runs??

 

[ChrisFL]

So if my computer is running slowly are there some things I can do simply to improve how fast my computer runs??

The best way to speed it up is to:

Defrag the hard drive (basically what you're referring to)

Upgrade memory (this will help a lot and it's quite inexpensive these days)

Run spyware/virus checks

Check what prorgrams start up each time your computer does and consider changing the settings for those programs you don't use very often (start your computer then do Ctrl-Alt-Del and check Task Manager which will show you the programs running)

 

[dcentity2000]

If you're running a Mac, try using an app called "Cocktail". This filters through all the extra stuff, organises and deletes where appropriate. It speeds the system up and frees up disk space all in one click



Rich::

 

[TwingleMum]

The best way to speed it up is to:

Defrag the hard drive (basically what you're referring to)

Upgrade memory (this will help a lot and it's quite inexpensive these days)

Run spyware/virus checks

Check what prorgrams start up each time your computer does and consider changing the settings for those programs you don't use very often (start your computer then do Ctrl-Alt-Del and check Task Manager which will show you the programs running)

Thank you. I have defrag but I'll try checking the task mgr.

Are there any good free spyware/virus programs. I have McAfree.

 

[Jerseylicious]

Thank you. I have defrag but I'll try checking the task mgr.

Are there any good free spyware/virus programs. I have McAfree.

You should only use one anti-virus at a time. If you want to get rid of McAfee, Microsoft just came out with their own, and it's free and good. Go to microsoft.com/SecurityEssentials and download it from there.

Spybot is a good anti-spyware program. You can get that at safer-networking.org

HTH!

 

[TwingleMum]

Thanks very much.