What is the best way to get rid of old files to speed up my computer?

And to add another hint of use, if your machines CPU doesn't have the NX node built in and you are running XP, XP will run "No Execute" in soft mode which is next to useless and actually hampers the Anti-Virus software you may have.

Removing "No Execute" can speed up older machines brilliantly and what you do is go to control panel, double click on system, select "Advanced" tab, hit the button that is marked up with "startup and system recovery", in the top pane there should be a button marked edit and do the following:

Hit edit, a notepad file will open, immediately click File and Save as and save it as bootini.bal (or whatever you want it to be called) exit out...

Hit edit again and this time look for the flag...

/noexecute=Optin /fastdetect

And change it to...

/noexecute=AlwaysOff /fastdetect

And this will disable NX routines completely for Windows and will allow the Anti Virus package to take control of any anti-execution routines.

Remember... back up the boot.ini file before making any permanent changes.

Ian Watson
November 2007

There is a free program out there called CCleaner that can do this in automated fashion and also fix registry problems and allow you to rip out those startup memory eaters that you don't need as well.

Another good utility is Tune-Up Utilities which is a suite of very good programs that tweaks the pc to a better performance however its clean up program is not as thorough as CCleaner but its registry defragmenter and cleaner is a little better.

Ian Watson
November 2007

Assuming XP. Start, All Programs. Accessories, System Tools, Disk Cleanup. This will not fix a sluggish PC however. You need to follow it it with Disk defragmenter. Additionally XP SP2 needs 512Mb RAM.

t
October 2007