Cleaning out your laptop

If you use a Windows laptop then this is the best way to clean out your machine, in my mind. There are several different ways to do this, & everyone has their preferred technique. This is how I do it, & have done successfully for many years.

If you have an "Apple" machine then you're best to consult Tim, (our resident Apple expert!) by either speaking to him at a meeting, or contact us, so we can pass your message on to him. However there are a few suggestions for Apple (inc iPad & iPhone) users, which you might want to try here before you contact Tim - at the foot of this page.

I start by typing "disk cleanup" into the "search bar" at the bottom of your screen. (On good old Windows 10 it's the white box waiting for you to write something in it & currently says "Type here to search". On Windows 11, the latest version, it shows a magnifying glass instead in the bottom of the screen, which you need to click on first.) By the way, that bar across the bottom of your screen is called the "taskbar". As soon as you start typing it will look for whatever you might be looking for, & by the time you've typed "disk" it will probably find Disk Cleanup, which is what we are searching for. Make sure you choose "run as administrator" so you can properly up clean up all the rubbish Windows leaves on your laptop.

As soon as you start "Disk Cleanup" it will show a small "Drive Selection" window with (C:) at the end of the entry. The name just before that doesn't matter as every machine is different, but as long as it ends with (C:) then it's the drive you want to clean up. Just click on "OK" (always use the left button unless I mention otherwise) & it will go ahead. (NB: The LEFT mouse button always performs the action, whilst the RIGHT opens the menu of options.)

Drives

This is a good stage to explain a bit about what we call "drives". Every computer, even a smartphone or a digital watch, has some kind of "drive". That is a part of the machine on which it "writes" the information it saves. The device also has "memory" but that is just used temporarily, & that is lost as soon as it get's something else to remember (I'm exactly the same!) or it is turned off. The drives on your laptop are where the device reads & writes the information it needs to save. That data is not lost when the device is shut down.

Back to the disk cleanup...

On a PC the Operating System (Windows) (I don't know how Apple devices work, but presume they must be similar) is always on the C-drive. Other drives are available if you add them, & a CD-drive can often be the D-drive. That's why we chose the C-drive when we started "Disk Cleanup", as it's the operating system we are cleaning up.

As soon as you click on "OK" your latop starts searching for unnecessary rubbish left lying around your C-drive. It will soon come up with a list & display that in a window. That list will show every group of files, a small "checkbox" on the left of each group, & the size of data involved on the right. You may need to drag the grey bar on the right downwards to see everything listed. Ensure that every line has a tick in it's checkbox. It's always worth noting the "Total amount of disk space you gain" underneath the list. Once you are sure that every checkbox is ticked, click on "OK" at the bottom of the window.

Windows will then ask you: "Are you sure you want to permanently delete these files? - which you certainly do are as they are all rubbish that should be in the bin!

The laptop will then start deleting all the junk, however, the Operating System (Windows) always keeps some infomation to tell it what it's doing, so a few of those files it may well need, so it won't delete those. It's highly likely that it will show a window when it tries to delete these files, saying "Windows cannot delete these files", with a choice of "Cancel", "Try again" or "Skip". Click on the small checkbox on the left saying "Do this for all files" then click on "Skip". All the unnecessary junk will then be deleted.

By the way, it is really essential to "Empty the recycle bin" as regularly as possible. At least every time you use your machine, or as often as you can whilst using it. Everything in the bin uses up space & memory!

Voilà! That takes care of the main part, now to complete the job!

Windows always misses some rubbish that your programs (Apps) leave on your machine. We need to get rid of those ourselves. To find them, you need to open up your "File Explorer", the yellow & blue icon on the Taskbar at the bottom of your screen, which will look like this:

Once you open up File Explorer it should look something like the image below, although my computer has several additional drives, as well as C, so is more complicated. (By the way George, I know you have a different layout in File Explorer, which we haven't yet worked out. At the very top bar, where mine says "Quick access", just click on that name & type "C:", then press Enter. You can then skip the next few steps & rejoin us after the first image, as you know.)

By the way, if you want to see any pictures on this website larger, just click on them. They will open in a new window, which you can then close, as this window is still open in the backgound.

A quick note. Before you start you must go into "File Explorer" then open the File menu at the top-left, which will probably be highlighted, & open "change folder & search options". There are three tabs, namely General, View & Search. Click on "View" then ensure that "Show hidden files, folders and drives" is ticked, then that "Hide extensions for known file types" is unticked. That will allow you to see all the stuff that the system keeps hidden from you.

Now you can get rid of that rubbish the system leaves behind...

In File Explorer click (once) on "C-drive" on the left. Your drive will have a different name, I named mine "Office" as I read it from other machines on my home network. But will always have (C:) at the end.

Next, double-click on the "Users" folder, to open it, & you will see a window like the next one. In which you need to find the folder with a different name, set up for you personally.

The normal list should be

• All Users
• Default
• Default User
• Public
• Then your own personal folder, probably at the bottom, although you may well have file called "desktop.ini" as well, which is irrelevant, & could actually be deletd whilst you're here! My folder is called "tattie" as Windows only knows me by my email address, so presumed my firstname was tattie! Your's should be called whatever name your laptop was given for you, but may well be completely different.

Inside your personal folder you need to find "AppData" (All one word), & open that up next.

Inside here you should only have three folders.

• Local
• LocalLow
• Roaming

Open up the first one, "Local"

This folder will have many folders inside it, so you need to pull the grey bar on the right down as far as it will go, to find the folder called "Temp". This is the last folder you need to open up, so go ahead.

You will see a whole line of stuff in here, ALL OF WHICH needs to be deleted.

You can choose everything in the folder in a few ways. If you click on one file, or folder, in the list, just once so it is selected without opening it. Then press the Ctrl (Control) key on the bottom-left of your keyboard somewhere, hold that down & press the letter A on your keyboard at the same time (then let both keys go), that will, or should, select all in the folder. Then press the delete key on your keyboard.

Again, Windows may not allow you to delete everything, but if a warning pops up asking if you're sure, you certainly are! As before if a program is running in the background, & needs some of the files, it will complain & Windows will be unable to delete the files the program needs. Persist though as Windows may well persuade the program to let it delete them, after you insist! There will probably be some things that cannot be deleted but give them all a go & let Windows complain a bit.

You have now given your mahine a thorough spring-clean. I hope it speeds up noticably, but you can never complete these steps often enough, as both Windows & your programs will keep leaving unneccesary rubbish in the places you have just scrubbed clean. The more often you return to these jobs the better for the health of your computer!

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Here are a few steps for Apple Laptop, iPad & iPhone users to try.

As your device ages, it will have more memory issues, charge more slowly, run out of battery faster, & generally run slower. Here are a few steps you can try to optimize your older device, so it runs faster, before contacting Tim, our resident Apple expert!

• Close all your apps regularly. (Remember that on an iPad or iPhone, simply press the "home button" twice, quickly, to see any apps which are running in the background. Drag them to the top & off the screen to close them.
• Restart the device to clear it's memory. Turning the iPad off & back on clears the available memory. It also gives the device a fresh start. Hold down the Sleep/Wake button on the upper rim of the iPad &/or the power button and volume up button on recent iPad models) to bring up a slider that lets you power the device off.
• Free up some space. iPads need about two gigabytes of space to operate smoothly. Check your iPad storage (Settings – General – iPad storage), and see if there is anything you can delete or uninstall.

If all that fails & you still need assistance, please use "Contact us" below. That will open your email app, so we hope you have one installed!