how do i scan my hard drive t find out what is on it, and then clean it up without buying additional software?

Question

find ilnfo on hard drive...clean hard drive without software of internet programs you have to purchase...

Answer 1

If you have a computer with Windows OS, then try Windows Defender. It's free and for me, it does a really great job with scanning my Hard Drive and finding things on there that my Antivirus software didn't pick up on. Also, you may want to try Spybot-Search and Destroy to see if there's any spyware on your computer. It's also free.

As far as regular programs, go to Start-Control Panel - Add/Remove Programs. This will give you a list of programs on your computer, and you can pick which programs you use less often (like a game). But be careful what you delete.

Answer 2

"Clean the hard drive" starts with Disk Cleanup, which you will find under Start, All Programs, Accessories, System Tools, Disk Cleanup. Run that.

Next, in the same place, choose Disk Defragmenter. Run that.

After it is done, restart the computer and notice that it is running better.

Then go online and download and install AdAware Personal SE, install it and run that. It will find spyware that might be slowing your computer. It's free.

And of course, you should have an anti-virus program already, but if not, there are free anti-virus programs that are very good, such as AntiVir. If you don't have one, get one and run it.

To see what's in your computer, you can right click Start, choose Explore, and you will get a window showing how your computer is organized and what's where. Do not delete anything in the Windows folder, do not delete anything in the Programs folder. The files and folders in these directories are needed by Windows to operate and by your programs.

Answer 3

windows built in disk cleanup works ok but not good enough to really get your computer clean. I reccomend going to http://www.ccleaner.com and download and install ccleaner. It is a free program and totally safe to use. It will scan your computer and compile a list of files that can be deleted and give you the option to run cleanup. Also it has a registry scanner that will scan the registery for errors and fix them. Using this program and defragging when done will clean up your computer quite nicely, fix any registry errors, and increase your computers performance. I have used this program for some time and I highly reccomend it to anyone

P.S All files that are shown in the list are safe to delete so no need to worry about deleting something important.

Good Luck. I hope this helps

Answer 4

go to the control panel......click performance and maintenance and click free up space. Or click rearrange (defrag your computer). Be careful which programs you decide to erase cuz it could cause your comp to freeze up or worse.