my windows-7 has a lot of system files bloat (remove, pc, partition)

[stanley-88888888]

i was trying to figure out why my win-7 pc is kinda' sluggish. i created a file generating the md5's of all the redundant files on my pc:

[stanley-88888888@hyper ~]$ grep -c ./win/ md5.match
75689

compare that with the redundant files on my fedora partition:

[stanley-88888888@hyper ~]$ grep -c -v ./win/ md5.match
48

which is mostly stuff in .cache/mozilla.


edit: wait a minute, i am only examining my home directory so that mite be why ...

[bigbear99]

browswer caches can hold tens of mb.

You might want to start with system cleanup.

a utility like disctective can tell you a lot too.

[gguerra]

Try CCleaner. It's free. The disk cleanup utility in Windows will help as well.

[thecoalman]

If you are using the built in disk cleanup with Windows there is a button "clean up system files". That will remove files that were archived from Windows update, you will be unable to back out of updates that were applied. CCleaner will remove them too.

[bigbear99]

ccleaner is also a "registry cleaner". Usually not wise to mess with the registry, and many experts recommend not using the registry cleaning function.

[Tek_Freek]

I second that. Stay away from registry cleaners unless you know what you're doing.

[thecoalman]

Originally Posted by bigbear99

ccleaner is also a "registry cleaner". Usually not wise to mess with the registry, and many experts recommend not using the registry cleaning function.

It has a lot of features and that that is one of them but it's not part of the basic "cleaner". As far cleaning the registry that is something where the old adage "If it ain't broke don't fix it" applies. There is very little benefit from cleaning the registry and you could make a fully functioning computer a brick.

[bigbear99]

and therefore very little benefit to ccleaner. good old windows tools do the job well.

[Peregrine]

Spoken like someone who has never used CCleaner.
It's excellent and has a lot of great features. I'm using it right now to clean up some computer using the Duplicate Finder.
Prior to that I freed 2 GIGABYTES of crap using it on another computer.

[thecoalman]

Originally Posted by bigbear99

and therefore very little benefit to ccleaner. good old windows tools do the job well.

CCcleaner will remove a lot of unneeded files Windows does not. There is also selection box to tell it to remove non critical items you *may* need, log files for example which can take up a lot of space especially if you have been using the computer for a long time. Log files are good for troubleshooting but most people don't need to know what happened 1 month ago let alone years ago. It will also clean old files for multiple applications and browsers. You can do this all at once....