Microsoft® Windows Vista®: use Disk Cleanup

Would you like your files to open more quickly? Need to free up hard disk space? Windows Vista includes the Disk Cleanup Wizard, which helps save hard disk space by deleting files you might not need, such as temporary Internet files or the contents of the Recycle bin. This demonstration shows you how to use Disk Cleanup to remove unnecessary files from your system.

From the Start menu, choose Computer from the right side. In the Computer window that opens, right-click your hard disk's icon.

In the menu that appears, select Properties from the bottom

and the hard disk's Properties dialog box opens. A graphical displays your used and free space. From here, click Disk Cleanup, which is to the right of the pie chart.

A pop-up Options menu appears. You can choose to clean up files for the current user or for all users on the computer.

Let's click My files only for this demonstration.

The Disk Cleanup box shows the process calculation and displays the areas being scanned.

Then the Disk Cleanup dialog box opens. The menu displays the categories of files that can be deleted. You can scroll up and down to view the categories.

Before you delete the files in a category, you might want to review them. To see the files within a category, highlight the category and then click View Files.

Another window will display the specific files that will be deleted, along with details about each file. To close this window and return to the dialog box, click the close button at the top left.

Use the click boxes to the left of each category to select the files that can be deleted. Note that a description of the types of files in a category is displayed below the file list. Once you're ready to delete all selected files, click OK.

A pop-up will ask you to verify that you're certain you want to permanently delete these files. Click Delete Files to confirm.

The Disk Cleanup window will appear, with a progress bar.

The hard disk's Properties dialog box will display again. Depending on how many files you chose to delete, you may see a small or large change in your allocation of space. Just click OK to close the dialog box.

Now you've learned how to delete unnecessary files from your hard disk using Disk Cleanup. Your computer should run faster and files should open more quickly.