Computer Illiterate, Help?

Question

When trying to do a disk defragment on my PC, it tells me I only have 11% memory and I need 15% to perform a defragment. It says this under D drive. Where do I need to go on my PC and delete things, is it photos, music, what? I need really basic instructions. I have gone to different areas and tried deleting things but it still says 11%. What do I do help????

I have emptied the recycle bin. Does D drive dictate certain things on your comp?

Answer 1

Memory on a computer is either RAM (Random Access Memory) or Virtual Memory.

RAM is your memory cards plugged into your mother board.
Virtual memory is an area of your hard drive that is used for memory.

Memory is used by the programs that are running on your computer. The memory holds the main program so that it can be executed.
If you look at the start bar on your computer you may see a number of windows active. Each one of these windows is occupying memory. You may also see several icons on the start bar. These also indicate programs that are running and are also occupying memory.

The questions that you will need to answer are:
1) How much free disc space have I got?
Use Windows Explorer to find this. Right click on the disc and then click on properties.
2) How much memory have I got?
Click Start then Run and type dxdiag. The first page should show how much memory you have.
3) How much memory am I using?
Use task manager to find out how much memory you are using.

Solution.
Buying more memory is probably not the answer at this stage.
You may be better off increasing Virtual Memory. (use help to find out how).
Also shut down some of the programs that are running. The icon programs are running but waiting for something to happen. Close them too.

Now try again. Good luck.

Answer 2

You can try doing a disk cleanup on both c & d drive. Perform a right click on the c drive and you should see a button for disk clean up. Once you get that display, select the options you want and click clean up. Do the same for d drive. If you are doing a disk fragmentation, most likely, the pc needs space on your c drive. You can also take a look at a directory called c:\temp to see if there is anything to delete and also c:\documents and settings\\local settings\temp folder and also temporary internet folder. You can probably delete some files there. When you do internet surfing, you are probably caching your files. You can clean this if you are using IE, go into tools>internet options>temporary internet files and select the button to remove the cache. Hope this helps.

Answer 3

Before defrag u must run the Disk Clean up utility.

Answer 4

Go to the start menu, then go to control panel, click on Add or Remove programs. This will tell you of most of the programs you have on your computer. It will also tell you approximately how often the program is used. Hope that helps.

Answer 5

did u empty the recycle bin on your desktop. that can clear more space up.