Can you erase every information on the computer?

Question

The problem is, I have very very low hard drisk space. And disk cleanup, removing programs, is not helping. I even deleted a 4 GB game installed onto my computer to save space. Help me!

How do I erase everything on my computer and start clean? Can I get back all of my hard disk space, as it was when first purchased?

Answer 1

Clean out your temporary files, get rid of the cookies, clean out the trash can, use PKZip to shrink files that you don't use anymore, and transfer some of those files to Cds or a DVD (which has more storage space). The defragment the hard drive.

Go to the desktop and double click on the My Computer Icon, then select the drive and right click on it. A drop down menu will appear and you have to click on the Properties option. This will open a new dialogue box with a large pie chart in the middle. This pie chart tells you how much space you have used on the hard drive; blue = used, magenta = free. Then click on the Disk Cleanup button below the pie chart.

There is an option that will let your compress the files on the Hard Drive. However, this will make all of your computer run slower, and I know an expert that doesn’t trust the disk compression program, use PKZip instead and don’t compress any programs that you use, except for backups of them.

This operation will clear out the temporary and install files that you no longer need, automatically. It will not touch your other files. It will also clean out the cookies directory. If you have been to a website, then the record of that might be destroyed. If you have made some selections on a website, and if you save your password and username on that website then this information may be lost. The passwords and usernames won’t change though. When you return to that site and log back in then you can select the save option to save your password again; which will write another cookie on your computer. Cookies are harmless text only files used to monitor where you have been on the web and some things that you have done at the websites. They need to be cleaned out occasionally. Cookies cannot carry a virus, but they can carry tracking information so that companies like Doubleclick know when you have been at a website. It is a good idea to set Internet Explorer to refuse 3rd party cookies, which will help with this problem.

Once you have finished here open the trashcan and delete its contents. When the computer “erases” a file it really doesn’t get rid of it, it only forgets where the file is. Other programs can find that data, unless the computer overwrites it.

Close out the Trashcan and see if the pie chart has changed. That will show you the current state of the drive. If not then close the dialogue box and reopen it with a right click on the hard drive.

PKZip and other archive programs takes a group of files and condenses them into one file. The program uses up all the space for its larger single file that the smaller files might have wasted. The larger the zip file is the more space it can save. Once a file is zipped it cannot be read, unless you unzip it and return it to its original size and format. If you are zipping compressed files like mp3 files then you are not going to get much extra space out of it.

If you have a CD burner or a DVD burner (which normally burns both CDs and DVDs) then you can transfer some files to the hard media to store them. Always make a backup of the CD or DVD since errors or minor damage can ruin some of the information on it. If you have a lot of text or picture files then you can put them on the CD or DVD and still access them. If you have a lot of data files that you don’t use often then you can transfer them, or you can Zip them and then transfer them to the hard media. Store these copies in a cool dry and safe place. Check on their contents every year or two to see if the files could be damaged. If so then get your backup and make another copy of it.

When a file is put onto the hard drive it isn’t always put together, sometimes (like when the Hard Drive is getting full) the computer has to find any spare sector to place that file. The Defragment operation will pull all those files and write them so they are all together and so save you space. If you do a lot of file moving, installing a lot of files, or any other operation similar to this then you should do a Disk Defragment.

Start > Programs > Accessories > System Tools > Disk Defragmenter
This will open a new dialogue box. Select the drive that you want to defragment and press the Analyze button at the bottom left of the dialogue box. This will tell you how fragmented your drive is. The more Red the worse your drive is fragmented.

If your drive is fragmented then you need to run the defrag program. This will take a while, depending on the size of the hard drive, and it will slow down other operations on the computer so you should do it just before you go to bed and let it run all night.
When the Analysis is completed then a small dialogue box will appear. Use the mouse to grab the title bar and move it away so you can see the bar chart underneath. Even if the Disk Defragmenter Program says that you don’t need to defragment your hard drive look at the bars and the amount of red on the bar graph. If you see a whole lot of red then defragment it anyway. It will clean up the files, and put them all together, in a row. This will take less space and it will make programs run faster, or allow you to access the data quicker so it is a good thing to do on a semiannual basis (depending on how often you change, transfer, install or move files).

Close the Disk Defragmenter and open Windows Explorer (Desktop > double click on My Computer > select the drive.) Open up the Windows Directory and look for any folder labeled Temp, Temp Files, or Temporary Files. You can delete the contents of these folders safely. This is where the Windows Operating system stashes data that it needs for one operation and is now not needed. Disk Cleanup may miss these programs.

Answer 2

you have to reformat the hard drive. Not for the faint of heart though. I would get your local guru to do it. They will also save any files you want to keep before it is erased. Then you have to reinstall everything from the bottom up (op system, programs etc) and then put back your files.

Answer 3

Some systems come with a "system restore" CD that will bring it back to the way it was when you first bought it.

If you don't have one of those, your only alternative is to erase the file system completely and install the operating system from scratch.

Answer 4

Sure can. Safest bet is to take it to comp shop. They can clean the whole thing and reinstall it all. I'm assuming you still have all the discs that came with it when you bought it. They'll need them because tof the licenses

Answer 5

Backup your personal information on a cd\thumbdrive and then reformat your computer.

Answer 6

YES if you restor your computer by restarting and right at that first screen you put ctrl and f11

Answer 7

Only if you fdisk the hard drive and reinstall windows.

Answer 8

Run----> Format C:

Answer 9

format your hard drive and rewrite windows or get a 250GB hard drive if your is 5GB