What should I definitely not delete from my PC?

Question

Recently my PC has slowed down a lot. The hard drive is 18.6 Gig and I only had 4Gig free.

I ran all the system mechanics software and cleaned and defragged the disk. It's still showing only 5Gig free, though. I don't have that much music or photos stored. Something is clogging up the hard drive and I don't know what, or which files to delete. There aren't that many space-taking programs, either. Please help.

Answer 1

try virus and spyware scans or get a bigger hard drive

Answer 2

Upgrade your hard drive now! It's years out of date. No hard drives are made smaller than 80 GB now.

80GB:http://www.aria.co.uk/Products/Component...

160GB:http://www.aria.co.uk/SuperSpecials/Othe...

The 160GB is much, much faster. Either one'll keep you going till you get a new PC. Or get a new PC now! Customize one of these.

http://www1.euro.dell.com/content/produc...

Answer 3

Your favorite games folder.

t4ke c4re

Answer 4

My guess is that your slow down problem is not hard drive space related. You have about 20% of your drive empty which isn't bad considering its small size.

I would look at the programs you have running at startup and clean them up.

Answer 5

Do this, go to control panel-add/remove programs(or it will say programs). look at all the programs installed which ever ones you dont use uninstall, if any of them are like msx something or microsoft update or anything dont delete, but anything like photoshop, games, microsoft word, etc... take it out. also any program running takes up memory(RAM) so dont have alot of programs running in the background, example is your limewire, aol instant messenger, anything you dont need or use.

Answer 6

You must have an Asus computer. For starters 18GB is nothing, even older computers 10-15 years ago has at least 40GB, these days most computer have 80GB or more for their hard drive.

Disk cleanup, will not free up that much space, just a bit of odd and ends, nothing major

Disk defrag, which needs at least 15% of free space to work, doesn't free up any space at all, as that is not it's function. It just moves things around a little, getting them in order.

So in order to free up space, remove any program or games you no longer use, start with any you installed yourself.

After that go through any old pictures, videos and documents you no longer use and remove those. It also might be a good idea to invest in a portable hard drive and save documents and pictures on that from now on.

Answer 7

18.6 gb in this day in age is a lot. What version of windows are you running and what sp is that up to. Most of the harddrive space will be used by windows for updates and service packs this could be anything up to 10gb for vista and xp. The bad news is you either continue with the current HD or you upgrade it to something a bit bigger. Im guessing its an older system using the ata connections (ribbon) new hd for this type can be cheap.

Answer 8

Make a HIJACK THIS LOG  and submit it.

Answer 9

If you're after a little more space then delete your old restore points, that should free up nearly 2 gig.... until restore uses the space again :(

You'd be better off upgrading the hard drive for something 60/80gig plus

HTH