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Old 13-03-2022, 04:15 AM
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sil (Steve)
Not even a speck of dust

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Join Date: Jun 2012
Location: Canberra
Posts: 1,474
Search in windows start menu for “Computer Management” and there is a drive management feature in that which will show you the C drive and if the physical device (75GB) has other partitions using the space. Depending who installed the OS there is likely a “Recovery”partition which is mostly wasted space. Windows is great at bloating and people use it poorly (ie let it do what it wants) so you easily lose a ton of space, Microsoft updates take up a lot of space, Windows downloads the the update somewhere on the drive, when installing it extract that update to another spot on the drive, so even before it installs the update its used at least twice the space for the update files, Office updates are a big offender of this and once its updated it doesn't always delete the installer and the extracted files, as it may need to roll back to an earlier version if an update fails or introduces bugs etc, and windows basically “forgets” these temporary files are there wasting space. Similarly programs do the same and many programs use temp files or scratch space when running low memory. None of these do it the same way or put their garbage in the same place. Plus windows installs stuff even if you dont want it or have deleted it already, some of their funky new features do this: like 3d printing program and similar stuff you probably dont want or would ever use (if you buy a 3d printer you get the software you need with it, you dont need micrsoft insinuating their program). So you can go through and uninstall the stuff you dont need like the games pack.

Look into CleanMyPC in the decades of computer building and repair its by far the best program to clean up free space by finding and deleting all the garbage programs have downloaded in case you want to buy a feature or whatever. CCleaner is great for a storebought pc to get rid of all the marketing garbage thats the computer comes with but it doesnt do a great job later on to clean up garbage anywhere like CleanMyPC does. People just dont know how to use their computers properly to keep it clean and running well and I bet the machine has a ton of viruses and malware on it too using space, memory and cpu so its running slow overal, as well as loading more malware in the background. Even on computers of “professional experts” I’ve met who claim their computers are clean I can find a bunch of malware and virusesrunning. They usually think the nortons that came with their computer will keep it clean and safe, very very wrong thinking there. People are selfishly blind in regards to cyber security and trust a piece of software will protect them always, when they are often the problem. People want what they want and will drop their guard to get what they want its how people get scammed and get infected computers its bad habits and / or wanting to get software without buyin the expensive way (ie they let a friend install their “free” copy onto their machine. A clean machine is not a set and forget scenario, I regularly do a variety of manual checks, digitally walking my digital perimeter looking for holes in the fence if you will but a lot of that requires skilled knowledge so I can’t advise do this and this and your computer is forever safe because its not that simple and wont stop others with access to the computer from compromising your machine unknowingly and in particular it wont stop you clicking on a dodgy link in an email or a popup notification. I guess with a 75GB drive its an old machine and the rest of the specs are pretty poor too. Its probably long past the point of needing a new OS reinstall, its good practice to do this every couple of years to reformat the drive and reinstall the operating system (Never restore it) to kill all viruses, clean temp files etc and get you back to a happy working state. Most people just buy a new pc instead but that the sort of disposable culture we live in. Depending on the usage of the computer a reinstall with Ubuntu Linux may be best as it wont be vulnerable to the windows based malware thats most machines pick up. If you’re dependent on Office you can probably import your documents into Googles equivalent program and have your files “in the cloud” available to you on any computer or device. But thats another cyber security area people are lazy about.Of course to do an os reinstall you need your original Windows install disc and the license code. Ubuntu if free an you can burn to disc or mount on a usb drive to install. Both take hours to do so expect to leave overnight and have a heap of updates to download and install too.
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