How do you clean up all the deleted related stuff on your hard drive?

[kite]

I need to know because someone has a pretty old computer and needs it to go faster and needs it to have some stuff cleaned up. I know that when you delete a folder all of the files don't go so what am I asking is how you delete all those files that are still hanging around. Thanks.

Kite

[Bovon]

If it is a Windows installed program, it must be uninstalled...not simply deleted. Go to control panel, and add/remove programs, and highlight which ones you want to uninstall. This action usually will not get rid of the entire folder, but takes it out of the registry, win and sys.ini files...so, then you can safely delete whats left over.

If a progran is known to be a Windows installed application, but it does not show up in add/remove programs, you may have to get a 3rd party uninstaller to take care of it. Norton System Works comes with one of these, called Clean Sweep...it does a lot of things like uninstalling applications.

Many times, drivers are not uninstalled with the application, like video, modem and sound...if you actually know the name of these drivers, you can delete them...but...be very carefull that you know for sure what you are doing here..if you delete a driver and its in use with an application...you'll wind up reinstalling the app. Sometimes when I want to do this, I create a TEMP folder, put a copy of everything I want to delete in there, then if I delete the wrong thing, I can simply move it back.

[charmler]

Often times the best and fastest way is fdisk, format, reinstall.

[Alicealt]

Hi,
Try www.lsoft.net (http://www.lsoft.net) It can do a lot of cleaning job.

[Alicealt]

Sorry http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif.
The name of utility - ZDelete