In the process of using a computer with the Windows operating system, various data invariably accumulates on the C drive. This data includes installed programs, files on the desktop, saved documents, and temporary files. As a result, a situation may occur where. This leads to the fact that the operating system and installed programs cannot normally save their settings, temporary files and work results. This, in turn, leads to the fact that the computer starts to slow down and it becomes almost impossible to work behind it. In this article we will talk about how to remove unnecessary files and free up disk space.

Step # 1. Clean your desktop.

If you want to clean up your C drive, the first thing to do is clean up your desktop. All files that are on your desktop are physically located on the "C" drive. Therefore, transferring files from the desktop to another drive (for example, to the D drive) will immediately free up a lot of occupied space on the system drive.

Step # 2. Check drive C.

Sometimes, in order to clean the C drive, it is enough to look at what is saved on it and transfer the user files to another drive. Take a close look at the folders on drive C. If you find folders or files that are not part of the operating system or installed programs, you can move them. For example, it is not uncommon for the C drive to contain the Downloads folder, which is used by various download managers.

You also need to look into which folder your browser downloads files. For example, it downloads files to the C: \ Users \ User \ Downloads folder. Check this folder and transfer its contents to another drive.

Step # 3. Use the Disk Cleanup function.

The developers of the Windows operating system foresaw the need to clean up the C drive and created the corresponding function. Open "My Computer" and right-click on the C drive and select "Properties" in the window that opens.

After that, the "Properties" window will open in front of you. Here you need to click on the "Disk Cleanup" button.

After clicking on the "Disk Cleanup" button, the operating system will analyze the files on the "C" drive and offer a list of files that can be deleted without harming the computer.

You must check the boxes next to the files that you want to delete and click on the "OK" button. After that, the system will warn you about the deletion of files and perform a cleanup of the C drive.

Step # 4. Remove unused programs.

If the previous steps are not enough for you and you still do not know how to clean the C drive, then you can uninstall programs that you rarely use. To do this, open (or the start screen with tiles if you are using Windows 8) and search for "Add or Remove". Then start the Add or Remove Programs program. You can also launch this tool through the Control Panel (Control Panel - Programs - Programs and Features).

After that, a list of installed programs will open in front of you. In order to delete an unnecessary program, you need to right-click on it and select the "Delete" menu item.

Step # 5. Other Ways to Clean Up Drive C.

There are also more radical ways to clean the C drive.They are recommended to be used only as a last resort:

• Disable hibernation mode. uses disk space C. By disabling this feature, you can save several gigabytes of space. To do this, open a command prompt with administrator rights and run the command powercfg.exe -h off.
• Disable System Restore. System Restore also wastes space on the system drive. In order to clean up the C drive, you can turn off this function. To do this, follow the path: Start - Control Panel - System and Security - System - Advanced System Settings - System Protection tab.

Computers are so ingrained in our lives that it is simply impossible to imagine a world without them. Despite this, many users do not know how to take care of their "iron horse". For example, not everyone knows how to clean up the C drive. This article will help you fill the knowledge gap.

Filling up the system disk can lead to a number of inconveniences. If the C drive is low on space, then the following problems may occur:

• You cannot install new programs;
• No room for operating system updates;
• The speed of the PC slows down.

The first problem can be easily solved. If there is not enough space on the C drive, then you can install new programs in other partitions (D, E, etc.). But what about the second and third points? There is only one way out - you need to clean up the system disk. How can this be done? How do I free up space on the C drive? The answer can be found in this article.

How to free up space on the system drive?

Many people don't have the faintest idea of ​​how to clean up the local C drive. People mistakenly think that it is very difficult. Cleaning your computer is a quick and easy process that does not require any specialized IT knowledge. However, this procedure should not be neglected. The system disk should be cleaned at least once a month.

There are many ways that you can clean your computer from junk. We will consider the most effective in this article. Before you start, it should be noted that the methods below can be used to clean up the C drive from junk on Windows 10, Windows 7 and other versions of this OS.

Removing unnecessary programs manually

Of course, software takes up the most space. Therefore, when you need to clean the C drive from garbage, first of all, you need to pay attention to the software.

How to clean drive C from unnecessary files? To uninstall the program, you need to use the built-in Windows utility. To start it, you need to enter the "Start" menu and select "Control Panel" in the drop-down tab. Then you need to go to the "Remove Programs" section.

A new window will open containing information about all programs that are on the computer. They can be sorted by size, date, or title. What can be removed? First of all, software that is not used at all is subject to uninstallation. As a rule, these are completed games. In order to uninstall the program, click on it with RMB, after which the corresponding tab will appear.

Built-in Windows utility

You can free your computer from garbage using a standard Windows utility. This is done very simply. You need to go to "Computer" and click the RMB on the disk that we will clean up. In the drop-down list, click on the "Properties" item, after which a new window opens with information about the memory partition. We are interested in the "General" tab. We go there and click on the "Disk Cleanup" button.

The built-in utility will start analyzing the data and looking for unnecessary files. This will take a certain amount of time. After the program analyzes the computer memory, it will display a list of unnecessary files. They must be ticked off and then click "OK".

You can't free up a lot of memory this way, but you can win a couple of tens of megabytes.

Temporary files

To carry out the correct installation or update of programs, antiviruses, etc. temporary files are created on the computer. The operating system stores them in the Temp folder, which is located on the C drive. Temporary files are not needed for the daily operation of programs. Therefore, software that uses intermediate resources removes them after the installation or update is completed in an automatic mode.

However, sometimes a crash occurs due to which temporary files are not deleted. This leads to the fact that the Temp folder begins to gradually become clogged and take up more and more space on the system disk. To fix this, you need to manually delete the intermediate files. This is done very simply. You need to go to the Temp folder, which is located at "Computer"> C drive> Windows folder. To free up memory on the C drive, you must uninstall the contents of this folder.

In Windows 10, Windows 7 and other OS versions, there are two folders for storing temporary files. You can get to the second one through the "Start" menu. You just need to enter the search term% Temp%. The folder needs to be opened and emptied. It should be noted that sometimes the operating system may issue a warning that some files are not being deleted. This suggests that they are currently being used by some program. If such a message appears, then just click the "Skip" button.

"Basket"

Recycle Bin is a special folder that is temporary storage for deleted files. Everything that is stored there takes up computer memory. Therefore, the "Basket" needs to be cleaned from time to time. To do this, you need to right-click on the folder and click on the item "Empty Trash" in the drop-down list. After that, the folder will be freed from garbage, and there will be more memory on the C drive.

"Downloads"

Users quite often download movies, music, games through the standard browser downloader. Files from the Internet are automatically saved to the Downloads folder. And it, as you know, is located on the C drive. If the user often downloads some files from the Internet, then the free disk space very quickly dries up. To avoid clogging the C drive, you need to check the boot folder from time to time for large files.

You need to open "Computer" and go to "Downloads".

It is necessary to check the folder for the presence of large files and if there are any, then they must be deleted or moved to another disk.

Paging file

There is a paging file in Windows OS. How does it affect memory and why is it needed? Sometimes the system does not have enough RAM to perform certain operations. In such cases, the file takes a certain amount of permanent memory from the disk and uses it as RAM.

To free drive C, you need to make the paging file take resources elsewhere. You need to go to the "Computer" folder, and then click RMB. In the tab that appears, click on "Properties". A window will appear. In it we open "Additional system parameters".

Then click on "Options".

In the new window, go to the "Additional" section and click on "Change".

Install the disk from which the paging file will take memory. This is done as follows. Select the C drive and put a check mark in front of the "No paging file" property. To confirm, click on the "Set" button. With the other disk, we do everything the other way around and mark the property "System size".

If the window does not allow changing properties (the field with disks is highlighted dim), then uncheck the box next to the "Automatically select paging file size" option.

Hibernation

To save space on the C drive, you can turn off hibernation on your computer. You need to activate the command line (combination Win + R) and write in it: powercfg.exe –h off. Press Enter and voila - hibernation is disabled. After restarting your computer, you may notice that there is a little more memory on the system disk.

However, unless absolutely necessary, it is better not to turn off hibernation mode. This is an extremely useful feature that allows you to restore the operation of previously launched programs, even if the computer was turned off. To reactivate hibernation, write the command powercfg.exe –h on in the console and restart the PC.

Control points

Checkpoints are created after various changes in the system (updating drivers, installing new software, etc.). They allow you to roll back the system in case of any problems. But for such an opportunity you have to pay with system memory. You can delete checkpoints to free drive C. This will give a couple of megabytes of memory. In this video, you can learn how to delete restore points and thus clean up the local drive C:

Output

The memory on the C drive gets clogged up pretty quickly. This can cause a lot of trouble. To avoid problems, you need to monitor the amount of free space and clean the system disk from time to time. Cleaning the C drive has a positive effect on the performance of your computer and does not take much time. There are many free ways to free up disk space that is full of memory. Moreover, these methods are the same on all operating systems from Microsoft. That is, disk cleaning on Windows 10, Windows 7, Windows XP, Windows Vista is identical.

Good day ... Today we'll talk about how to How to clean up System C drive on Windows 7. B what is installed on the desktop is all connected with Disk C.

Cleaning the system drive C with built-in Windows 7 tools

And so, in order for this disk to have more memory, for this you do not need to store any large files on it, it can be music, movies, games, etc. You also need to periodically empty the trash can, which also accumulates a large number of deleted files by the user.

Move on. Go to "My Computer" - "System Drive C" - Go to the "Windows" folder - "Temp" folder. By the way, my disk now has 285 GB of free space, after cleaning the disk, let's see how much to add.

This folder contains files and folders that need to be deleted, we will delete immediately past the trash can, so that it does not then be cleaned again "Shift + Delete".

Let's move on to the next step. Go to "My Computer" in the "Organize" tab - "Folder and Search Options" go to the "View" tab, go down to the very bottom, check the "Show hidden files, folders and drives" checkbox, uncheck the "Hide protected system system files" , press "YES", confirm "OK".

Next, go to "My Computer", "System Drive C", "Users", the name of the computer in my case is the name "Max" for each computer it will have its own. This computer name is given when installing Windows 7. Go to the "App Data" - "Local" - "Temp" folder.

As you can see, there is also a huge number of files and folders that we do not need. We also delete them "Shift + Delete". Some files may not be deleted as they are already being used by some programs.

The next thing we need to do. We go to "My Computer" - "Drive C" and there we find the file "hiberfile.sys".

This file is responsible for the fact that the computer can enter hibernation mode. For example: You played some kind of game, or you have some important programs open, you need to leave for a while and so that the programs do not start again, just go to the "Start Menu" - "Shutdown" - "Hibernation".

If you don't need this mode, you can turn it off, it takes up 2.95 GB of memory for me, but maybe more.And so how to disable this mode. We go to the "Start" menu in the search bar, write cmd and run this file as administrator. A window will appear in which you need to register the following powercfg hibernate off

With this command, we disable this mode. Press "Enter", as you can see, the file has automatically disappeared from Disk C. What else can you do, how else can you clean up Disk C.

Go to "My Computer" press the right mouse button and select "Properties" - "Disk Cleanup". You have to wait a bit here. After that, go to the "Advanced" tab, in the lower window, system restore and shadow copying, click "Clear", in the window that appears, click "Delete", "OK", "Delete files". The disk cleanup process will begin. Upon completion of cleaning, click "OK".

Recently I met a poll "how much space do you have on the C drive", and this prompted me to show you how to clean the C drive of unnecessary files without deleting anything unnecessary.

As the survey showed, most people have only 100 GB allocated for the C drive, of which a couple of GB are free. This is not surprising, the OS and the necessary software take up 50 GB, plus garbage, temporary files and, as a result, the memory is all occupied. Let's get started and remove all the trash from the computer in order.

Quick clean Windows 10

We clean the downloads

I think everyone knows what this folder is and why it got full. If anyone is in the "Downloads" tank, this is the place where all your files that you downloaded / saved on the Internet are located. To find this folder on your computer, open "Computer / My Computer" and "Downloads" will be in the left menu.

If, for some reason, this folder is not in the left menu, then go to: Drive C, Users, "Your PC username", Downloads.

Now, as you understand, I propose to delete everything from this folder, except for what you need. It is better to move the rest of the files that will be useful to you to another disk.

To move files to another section, hold down the "Ctrl" key and left-click on the files / folders you need. After you have selected everything, press "Ctrl" + "X" (Cut) then open the folder where you want to move and press "Ctrl" + "V".

We transfer the downloads folder to disk D, E, F

If you have little space on the C drive and you cannot / want to expand it, it would be logical to transfer the downloads to another drive, where the capacity allows it. It won't work just like that, so you have to use the following method:

1. Go to drive C, Users, "Your PC Username", "Downloads".
2. Right-click on the "Downloads" folder and select "Properties" from the menu.
3. In the top menu, go to "Location".
4. Here is the path of your folder, which you can change manually or click "Find folder".

1. After you have selected a folder on another drive, click "Apply" and you're done!

Removing temporary files

Temporary files are stored in the "Temp" folder and they are all unnecessary junk that clogs up your computer. These files remain after installing programs, updates, etc. You can delete absolutely everything without even looking at what is there.

First, let's open the Temp folder. Open "Drive C", then "Windows" then open the "Temp" folder. Select all files with the keyboard shortcut "Ctrl" + "A" and delete them.

Windows may notify you that you can only delete a specific file with Administrator rights. Click yes / continue.

If you have Windows XP, then go to the next point, if Windows 7-10, then do the following:

In the search, on the start panel write "% temp%" and open the folder.

Alternative way to open: in the address bar, enter "C: \ Users \ UserName \ AppData \ Local \ Temp". Where "UserName" you need to enter the username of your PC.

In this folder, delete everything that you can delete. Personally, I have collected almost 2 GB of temporary files in 1 month.

We carry out cleaning with the Ccleaner utility

I would like to suggest that you use a program called "ccleaner". This is a very powerful utility that does half of what I said above, and also cleans cache, browser history and whatnot. If you don't need to clean something, for example, your browser history, you can turn it off in the settings.

In any case, I advise everyone to use it, so let's see where to download it and how to use it:

Go to the official website "https://download.ccleaner.com/ccsetup541.exe" and download the program.

Install and run the program. During installation, uncheck the boxes next to unnecessary programs (Avast, etc.).

Go to the "Options" tab, then "Setting" and select Russian instead of English.

Go to the cleaning tab and uncheck the checkboxes everywhere that you do not want to clean (browser history, etc.). After that click "cleanup".

You will be pleasantly surprised, after cleaning the program will show how many MB it has freed up your computer.

Removing unnecessary programs

Over time, a large amount of software is collected, which in fact is not used. You installed something yourself, something installed itself (viruses from mail.ru, avast and others ...). Earlier, I already wrote « » , so let's take a look at his example:

Remove the program in Windows 7:

1. Open the "Start" menu and click on "Control Panel". Now find "Programs and Features" in the list.

1. In the menu you see all the programs that are installed on your computer. Select "Avast" among them, click on it 1 time and click "delete" in the top menu.

1. You will open the program installer, in which there is an inconspicuous delete button at the very bottom. Click on it. After that, the antivirus will try to convince you, but you continue what you started and do not believe him.

1. Ready! Next time, be careful when installing software and games.

Remove Avast in Windows 10:

1. Open "Start", then "Settings", after "System".

1. Find "Avast" in the list, click on it, and then click "delete".

In this way, remove all programs that you do not use. Do not delete nothing you're not sure about, especially software from Adobe and Microsoft, and the rest is not really important.

Increase the space on the C drive

Increasing the space on the C drive at the expense of another drive is quite simple and in order not to take a million screenshots, I suggest watching a short video:

We clean the basket

After you delete any file or folder, it goes to the trash in case you suddenly change your mind. These files accumulate there until you empty the trash manually or restore them back.

After such a global cleaning of the C drive, be sure to empty the trash. In general, I recommend doing this regularly (once a week will be enough), especially since it does not take much time.

So that Empty trash, find on the desktop the icon with a trash can and the corresponding inscription, then right-click on it and select "Empty Trash" from the menu. Ready! Case for 10 sec. and there is more disk space.

What not to do

Here I will try to list all the possible mistakes of inexperienced users, as well as mention the tips of other sites and explain why you should not do this (if you forgot something, add in the comments):

• Do not under any circumstances delete any files and folders on the C drive if they are there without your actions. Those. you can only delete the folders that you have created. Otherwise, it may crash the OS.
• Don't do anything with the hibernation file. Do not disable it, do not delete it. Only experienced users can properly disable it, so as not to face a system error in the future. The megabytes won are not worth it.
• Do not disable or resize the paging file - this will affect the performance of your system.
• Standard "Disk Cleanup". In the properties of the computer there is a standard utility that supposedly cleans the C drive from garbage. Yes, it is, but for example, for 1 year of using a computer, 60 MB of files will be collected there (this is very small). It's just not easy already not relevant and don't waste your time.
• Uninstall programs completely (see details above) using the special installation files uninstall.exe. It is not necessary to delete programs together with the folder in the “program files” section, otherwise many other files of this program will remain on the disk.

Conclusion

As you can see for yourself, a lot of unnecessary files, programs and folders have been removed. Now you have a lot of free space on the C drive. I also recommend cleaning your computer so that it does not slow down.

Hi all friends!

If you care about the fast operation of your computer, then at least once every three months you need to carry out a global cleaning of the system from various types of garbage. If you do not do this, the computer will simply slow down.

After a long computer operation, a lot of garbage accumulates, getting rid of which you can free up gigabytes of free space on your hard disk, we will clear the disk from garbage in three steps. This article is for beginners. Take advantage of it and really notice the difference BEFORE and AFTER cleaning your hard drive. The most interesting thing is that we will get rid of the Temp folder in more detail about it:

Step 1) cleaning your computer from junk - manually

Cleaning the system drive "C" in Windows 7 is quite a simple procedure, but before using the programs, let's prepare our computer. To do this, we will use the standard tools of the system. We go to " Start» —>» A computer"And see our disks. Hover the mouse over the C drive and press the right mouse button. Go to the property and run disk cleanup.

The cleaning program starts, it estimates the volume, and prepares the files for deletion.

Attention! If you are cleaning the disc for the first time, it can take a long time, up to several hours. Therefore, for especially "Neglected Patients" it is necessary to set the cleaning for the night.

We put a checkmark everywhere before cleaning. Look in the trash can to see if you still have the files you need.

Do not forget to go to the advanced tab, there you can remove unnecessary programs and restore points. Click " OK"—> « Delete files»Unnecessary trash is removed. The preparation of the system is complete, we pass to the "heavy artillery" - we will use a powerful program to remove the remnants of debris.

Step 2. CCleaner - continue cleaning the disk

We continue cleaning. And in this we will be helped by a cool program called CCleaner. This is the most popular utility among garbage cleaners. Download the portable (portable version does not require installation) program. The download will start automatically. Launch the program, click " Analyze"(Analysis), after scanning" Run cleaner“(Cleaning). The language of the program changes as follows: Options» —> « Settings» —> « Language» —> « English«.

You can also clean the registry, I think you can figure it out - the interface is nowhere simpler. Let's move on to the next step.

Step 3. FreeSpacer - complete cleaning of the computer disk from debris

The program is called FreeSpacer and install it on your computer. I will say a few words about this wonderful program.

I have been using FreeSpacer for a very long time, and I like it does not have complicated settings, it all comes down to two actions: search and delete, it is distributed free of charge and does not delete anything unnecessary. I also want to say about its effectiveness, it removed from my friend 20 gigs of garbage and that's not the limit.

Run the program and click " Search.»There should be no other programs or background applications running on the system.

Problems