Just open the Windows Start Menu and search for Add or remove programs. Next, remove any programs you don’t use – again Windows has its own tool for this. Just check the tickboxes to select the ones you want to clean then click OK.

As we said, it’s usually a mixture of downloaded, temporary internet, and other files that are in the Recycle Bin. Disk Clean-up will now examine the drive and give you options of which content to remove.

Select the Disk Clean-up program at the top of the list, then choose which drive you want to fix. Just type Disk Clean-up in the search box next to the Windows Start button. Windows has built-in cleanup functions to create more space: they do so by emptying the Recycle Bin, and removing temporary and other files you no longer need. Removing as much junk as possible will help to restore your device’s responsiveness. You should always aim to have several gigabytes empty (ideally 10-20GB). This doesn’t apply to SSDs, as they function differently, but if any hard drive is completely full (or almost full) Windows won’t have the space it needs to run properly. This in turn slows performance, as your PC has to go further and work harder to find the files and programs it needs to access. Clean up your hard drive #Īs any PC ages, data will fill up the hard drive. Without further ado, here are five easy ways to clean up your PC or laptop.

One of the causes of a slow device can be a hard drive that’s nearly full, but it’s highly unlikely you need all of those sizeable files.įortunately, Windows 10 has some built-in tools to help you de-clutter.

Clean windows hard drive