As time passes your computer builds up a lot of unnecessary files which can slow many maintenance tasks. Scanning your computer for viruses or defragmenting your hard drive will go faster if there are less files to deal with.

You may be wondering "Where do these files come from?". Good question. Basically, as you computer goes about it's normal business it creates temporary files to perform tasks with. If the software programmer who wrote the program did a good job he would have the program delete these temporary files when they are no longer needed.

Another place where temporary files build up is "Temporary Internet Files". Whenever you visit a web site your Browser stores a copy of every web page you visit. It also stores a copy of every picture on every web page, each button, each logo, and so on. this can build up thousands of files, which can slow all your maintenance tasks.

Fortunately, Microsoft includes a Disk Cleanup utility to remove these temporary files. It would be a good idea to use this utility first before doing any other maintenance tasks.

• Double click on the Disk Cleanup icon on your Desktop.
  
  
  
  (If you don't have one, click on the Start button and click on Programs (All Programs in XP), click on Accessories, click on System Tools, and then Right-Click on Disk Cleanup, click on Send To, click on Desktop.
  
  
• Click OK to Select Drive C:
  
  
• Wait for the scanning to finish. The list of files types will be different depending on whether you use Windows XP/ME/98 and have Microsoft Office installed or not.
  
  The list may include:
  • Temporary Internet Files
  • Downloaded Program Files
  • Recycle Bin
  • Temporary files
  • Offline Web Pages
  • Microsoft Error Reporting Temporary Files
  • Office Setup Files
  • WebClient/Publisher Temporary Files
  • Compress old files
  • Catalog files for the Content Indexer
    
    
    
• It has been my experience that you can safely check all the boxes to remove all the files except for the Recycle Bin. this is the one that you may want to look in before deleting these files. Either leave Recycle Bin unchecked or go to the Recycle Bin icon on your Desktop and look in there to see if there is anything you still need. Remember, you have already deleted whatever is in the Recycle Bin once so there is a pretty good chance that you don't need anything in there.
  
  
• Click OK and your computer will remove these unnecessary files form your computer.