Computersight -

Have you ever been frustrated about an old program bogging down your computer?  Have you ever seen a faster computer and could only imagine that your computer was that fast?  Well here’s an answer for one or both of those questions.  When you download and install software to your computer, it takes up space on your HDD (Hard Drive Disc).  When this hard drive disc gets older and more filled with information, it bogs down your computers operating speed.  The easy way to get rid of this software (if you have a pc) is to use the built-in control panel.  Open up the start menu, and click on the icon that says Control Panel.  This icon will take you to a screen with a multitude of options including: Accessibility Options, User Accounts, Keyboard, Audio Devices, and last but definitely not least, Add/Remove Programs.  So next, you want to bring up the add/remove programs menu.  Double-click on the icon and it will bring up a dialog box with ALL of the programs and software that is on your computer.  It may seem like a harmless operation at first, but you can delete things on accident that you needed for your computer to run, so don’t get too trigger-happy with it, and only delete things that you know what their operation is and know you don’t want them anymore. 

Now, look through the list to find the program or a program that you don’t use anymore and don’t plan on ever using.  Then, click the Change/Remove Program button on the side of the selected program.  Now depending on what program it is, it will have a plethora of different installers, so just make sure you follow the instructions on the uninstall wizard.  Once your done deleting programs, there is one more thing you need to do.  When you delete programs from your computer, they tend to leave behind a fingerprint, or fragment of themselves in the hard disc. 

This fragment is not usually something that takes up a big space, but they add up VERY quickly, and for some reason they slow down your computer alot so I’ll show you how to get rid of fragments and unneccesary files.  First, you’ll want to open up the start menu and open up the “Programs” sub-menu.  Next, go to the “Accessories” menu, then from there into the “System Tools” menu.  There are a whole bunch of tools in here that can be helpful for stream-lining your computer, but we’re only going to be using two of them right now, which are the Disc Cleanup, and Disc Defragmenter.  First open up disc cleanup.  It will open up a small box will come up, and it calculates how much space will be freed if you use this operation.  Once it’s done with this it will ask you what you want it to clean up.  I reccomend just going with the default unless you know what your doing.  You can view the files it puts up, but that is unneccesary.  So just hit Clean, and the work will be done for you.  Next, open Disc Defragmenter.  It will bring up a dialog box that has two boxes and four or five buttons.  Only two of these buttons are active when you first open the program, which are the Analyze, and Defragment buttons.  If you want, you can click Analyze to see what kind of shape your hard drive is in, but if not, you can just hit defragment.  What this does is organize, and/or delete the fragments that get stuck in your hard drive.  You can run both of these programs at the same time to save time, but it causes them to run a little slower the more programs that you are running, so take it into consideration. 

For a quick step-by-step:

1. Open up control panel
2. From control panel, open Add/Remove Programs
3. Find the program you want to delete in the list and click Change/ Remove
4. Follow the instructions on the uninstaller to remove the program.
5. Open Programs/Accessories/System Tools
6. From there, open disc cleaner.
7. Use the recommended parameters for cleaning, then hit Clean
8. Open Disc Defragmenter (from System Tools)
9. Hit analyze to see what the hard drive looks like before you organize it
10. Hit defragment to get rid of all unneccesary fragments in your computer