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It is amazing how many glitches this takes care of,  so this should be done before any other extensive troubleshooting.
 

The minimal basics any end user can and should run on a regular basis

• Shut down any programs you are running, or reboot to be fresh, and then follow the next two steps in order.  These steps will take some time so ensure you have some time available before commencing these steps.
  

1. Start, Programs, Accessories, System Tools, Disk Cleanup: The program will go think a minute or so (dependent on how full your drive is). Make sure you select all BUT 'Compress old files' and 'Office Setup Files', then click on OK  This program will assist in cleaning up unnecessary files on your system.
   
2. Start, Programs, Accessories, System Tools, Disk Defragmenter: Select C: and click on Defragment. This will take awhile, especially the first time, so it is best to leave this for the end of day or lunchtime.

• Note: The more you can avoid installing different programs, the better. There are many 'cute' and tempting applications, but low value apps that could slow your system down even if you uninstall them later.

• It would be worth occasionally getting a technically savvy person who isn't scared away from the details steps below to run through those details on your system. LifeHacker has a good discussion on this topic

The Fine Detail Steps for Techs to really clean a system

If any of you can figure out how to automate any of this, please share with the rest of us (especially Andy Konecny who is trying to sort this out but never has the free time to do so). So far CCleaner comes the closest.

• Scan for Viruses with an up to date anti Virus scanner. Make sure the A/V is updating itself.
• Scan for SpyWare with an up to-date SpyWare detectors such as Ad-Aware and SpyBot (two are better than just one in this battle)
• Make sure all programs are shut down, especially antivirus as that it will slow this down.
• Delete all *.tmp and all ~*.* files off of C: using whichever file management tool you like.  e.g. for Win9x Start, Find, Files or Folders. After it has found all that it is going to find, select the a file in the list, then Ctrl-A to select all, and then press the Del key.  Alternately, in a DOS/CMD box, CD to the root of the drive (CD \) and type "del *.tmp /s" then ~*.*
• Delete everything in the Temp and TMP directories.
  Originally that was c:\win*\temp but can now be in a couple of places. C:\Documents and Settings(or Users)\userID\Local Settings(hidden?)\temp is the default for Win2K & XP. Doing a search for 'temp' would not be a bad idea on older Windows, but starting with Win2K gets ugly for this unless you can set it to not search compressed files.. Best bet to move forward, go to Control Panel, System, Advanced, Environment variable, set TEMP and TMP to a location of your choosing such as C:\temp. Ideal is to have all your temporary and files going to another local drive partition to reduce how fast your C: drive gets fragmented.
• Clear Internet Explorer's cache: Windows Start, Settings, Control Panel, Internet (Options), {or from in IE: Tools, Internet Options}, General Tab, "Temporary Internet file" or "Browsing history", Delete..., Delete Files, or Empty folder. While you are in there, click on the Settings button just next to the previous button you pressed and set the 'disk space to use:' to 42.
  (Note that different versions of IE have slightly different locations than this almost every version, just to make things 'interesting' for us)

Note that the previous three steps can be mostly done in Win98/2000 and up, under Programs, Accessories, System Tools, Disk Cleanup. This will get a lot but often not all of the temp files, but at least it is a start.


• If NetScape Navigator/Communicator/Mozilla/older FireFox is/are present, start it up, Edit, Preferences, Advanced, Cache, Clear Disk Cache. On newer FireFox, start it up, Tools, Options, Advanced, Network, Clear Now. While you in that area, make sure cache space is set to 50MB or less (I like 42MB, many people work well at 20MB)
• Reduce the size of your Browse cache to less than 50MB (50000KB) as the defaults are usually a lot more causing your system to slow down as it fills. The location is in the same area for clearing the cache.
• For more advanced cleanup check out the clean_all tool from LangaList, and possibly McAfee Quick Clean (I haven't had the chance to try it yet, but it looks like it will help)
• Start, Programs, Accessories, System Tools, ScanDisk, perform a thorough scan on C: (if not available try typing SCANDISK at a DOS/command prompt)
• Delete any old scandisk result files from the root of C:\
• If running Lotus Notes, compress the main local database, right click on the database (e.g. Andy Konecny on Local), Database properties, second tab with the I symbol, compact. It there are other local databases, they should be compressed occasionally as well.
• Run Microsoft's regclean tool. downloadable from www.microsoft.com
• Empty the recycle bin
• Run the CCleaner tool as it performs some of the above and more.   If you like your history or cookies, don't run it on defaults but carefully pick what you want cleaned up.
• Start, Programs, Accessories, System Tools, Defrag C: (Windows7 - Start, Programs, Accessories, System Tools, Disk Defragmenter) and run it even if it says its not fragmented because it is measuring fragmentation of files not fragmentation of disk space. (if not available try typing DEFRAG at a DOS/command prompt)
  Note that even a new install of Windows can really benefit from a defrag as the installation process does cause fragmentation to occur.
  Third party defrag tools work even better such as Symantec's old Norton Utilities has worked well for me (not sure of the current versions), Diskeeper among others. See the Wikipedia's Entry on Defragmentation
  If your drive just doesn't work anymore and you can't justify the cost of a data recovery service, you may have to use the hardware defragmenter to work out your frustrations on it (note that this is generally fatal to the data on the drive).
• Remember to re-enable antivirus after initial testing but before leaving that system


Reboot the system and then see if the issues are still a problem.

Steps you can take to reduce how fast your system gets fragmented.

• Add more RAM: Nowdays(2003) consider 512MB a minimum unless you only have one program open at a time, then you could get away with 128MB (assumes Win2K or XP, Win9x can scrape by with 64MB)
• Set up a permament fixed swap file. Note that was more of an issue in the past, but now that Windows(Vista+) is handling it more intelligently and most defragment tools can now defragment this file, these steps are more for moving it to a separate harddrive for performance(a real drive, not just a separate partition), or just space management if you underestimated how big Windows would bloat to when you partitioned your drive(s).
  - Assuming >32MB physical RAM, >300MB free space on C:, and Windows 9x.
  Follow the above steps, but before doing the Defrag disable virtual memory; Control Panel, System, Performance, Virtual Memory. Reboot to Safe Mode (F5 at boot time) and run a Defrag. go back to Control Panel, System, Performance, Virtual Memory, "specify my own virtual settings", set both the min and max to 256MB (or 4 times RAM, which ever is less).
  You can check SpeedGuides recommendations for specific customizations.
  - Assuming >128MB physical RAM, >1GB free space on C:, and Win2K +.
  As above, just make sure the total of Virtual Memory and Physical Memory are at least 600MB and many power users can readily use up to a 1000MB (know thy applications).
  Certainly never just disable the pagefile, some programs demand its existence and will break if it isn't there. See This LifeHacker article for more about it.
• Install and use an advanced defragmentation tool such as Norton Utilities which adds some intelligence to where files are placed on the hard drive so that rarely used or update files are all together at the edges and all the frequently changed files near the free space.

• Make sure you have no programs running, especially such things as AntiVirus, and Instant Messaging that hide in the system tray will cause restarts. Of course hainge made sure that there are no Viruses or SpyWare running.
• In Win9x, boot in SafeMode by hitting F5 as the system starts.

Additional:     Tools such as LitePC can also make a big difference in increasing performance of a system in addition to the above steps.
 

Some ISPs even occasionally have Spring Cleaning instructions that are worth reading, keeping a copy, and passing on to other typical end user.
 
 

Networking clients can also have significant impact on access, speed, security,and other oddities, so making sure you are running only what you need is important.
 

For advanced users:
If a system is acting odd or slow, it could be due to extra stuff running on your system, so knowing what is running is a good thing to figure out Ctl-Shft-Esc brings up the Windows Task Manager. Check under applications to make sure they all make sense and then look under Processes to learn lots. Basically check each item against the references below to make sure they should be there and then you can remove the ones that are of no or negative value to you. They will typically be started either from your Startup folder or via Regedit (for experienced techs only: My Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run )

some common ones are listed at
http://www.liutilities.com/products/wintaskspro/processlibrary/

If a service you are running is not listed, Google for it and if that doesn't find you some details then it is very likely a fairly new virus, worm, or spyware and you system requires even more advanced work on it.

A recently found tool that I am just starting to test out is Soluto

Last updated 2011-10-07

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