The hard drive not only stores the operating system in it and makes the computer bootable, but also helps the computer to run fast by assigning some of its space for real time memory needs by the operating system and the processor. This is why you would have seen “Disk Full” messages when hard drive approaches its limits. Thus it is always good to keep hard drive space as free as possible, so that the free space can be used by the operating system or by other applications. In this post I will let you know how to keep the hard drive as clean as possible and keep it junk free. Before we go into the steps we must know what all is considered to be junk in Windows. Some folders or files types considered junk or useless in Windows are like the Temporary Internet Files, Temporary Installation Files, Temp Files, Compressed Old Files, Recycle Bin Files, Old System Restore Files, Prefetch Files, and Memory Dump Files. These files are automatically created during the operation of computer and they occupy a lot of space on the hard drive. These files are also the home for viruses and spyware and it is always a good practice to regularly delete them from the hard drive.

Let us see how to clean these junk files.

Step 1: Click on ‘Start’ Menu and then click on ‘Run’. If Run is not available in the Start Menu the press the ‘Windows’ key on the keyboard along with letter ‘R’.

Step 2: In the ‘Run’ box type and execute the command ‘CleanMgr.Exe’.

Step 3: Select the drive which you want to clean and click on ‘OK’. Now Windows will scan the specified drive for all the junk files and later will display the number of files available and the amount of recoverable space by the deletion of these files.

Step 4: Select the type of files you want to clear and then click on delete to clean them.

Step 5: Open the ‘Control Panel’ and then open the ‘Internet Options’.

Step 6: Click on the ‘Delete’ button under the ‘General’ tab.

Step 7: Now select the type of content you wish to clean. The maximum space is consumed by Temporary Internet Files so you should select this option. Other options can be left untouched because they are just for saved password, and history of the browser.

By following the steps given above you can free a lot of precious disk space for system use.