window eraser

Happy new year all. Does anyone know of a good windows eraser type program? my computer seems to have alot of useless files and backups.
Any way to free up some additional system resources?
Thanks for your help.

 

What OS are you using?
Some generics for W2K/XP. Use the disk cleanup from the system tools or by right clicking your drive in My Computer. I prefer to manually delete files using the following. Delete everything that is allowed from the Windows or WINNT/Temp folder and the temp folder in your user(s) login. C:\Documents and Settings\user login\Local Settings\Temp
Delete IE temp internet files and history files.

Correctly uninstall any programmes you don't need or want to get rid of.

Do a search from the start menu using the following string and delete all that is allowed. *.old;*.bak;*.gid;*.tmp;*.dmp

In my sig are a couple of good registry cleaners. EasyCleaner has a usefull Unecessary Files cleaner tab that's worth using, but stay clear of the Duplicate Files cleaner one.

Use these after the above, and finally, run the disk defragmenter.

 

It depends the type of erasing you want to do. For erasing files securely and cleaning free space on your drives I like "Eraser" at http://www.heidi.ie/eraser/.
For cleaning temp files and surfing tracks, I like Clean Cache at http://www.buttuglysoftware.com/.
Both are free without adds etc and work very simply and well.
Floyd

 

Thanks for your help I use windows 98, My defrag doesn't seem to work it keeps starting over. I have Norton Internet security could this cause defrag problem?
Thanks,
shammie

 

Shammie, the problem with defrag is something is starting up in the background, probably your screensaver. That will make Defrag start over each time.
floyd

 

Floyd & Paul,

Thank you for your help. Floyd I will turn off screen saver and see if that helps. I run windows 98 do you know of a Cache Cleaner, the clean cache need 2000 or windows 4.0?
Thanks again,
shammie

 

Close all programmes before running the defragmenter, and let it run. Even moving the mouse is sometimes enough to make the defragmenter rescan from 0% and start again. If still problems, then boot into safe mode and run the defragmenter from there.