Windows XP Slow Startup | slow shutdown windows xp

File cleanup is an important part of fixing your windows xp slow startup problem. It can be significant cause of slowing down your PC even once windows xp is up and running.

We have fixed up errors on the drive and hopefully your startup is at least a bit faster. What else is there?

What also happens over time is that a lot of crud gets left on the hard drive. This crud can be temporary files, files that you have deleted and reside in the recycle bin and logfiles that in some cases can grow very big.

Now how do we get this crud on our disk? Well I have just mentioned one, deleted files that go to the recycle bin. Sometimes these files could be gigabytes in size. (Remember that video you deleted last week?)

Crud can be left when a program terminates because something has gone wrong.

One of the biggest is because naughty you do not close down your PC properly. Remember you were typing that large document. You finished and instead of closing word down and shutting down windows properly you just hit that power off button!

Naughty, naughty, naughty.

When you start using a program (MS word for example) It generates temporary files. When you are writing a document your word document is actually written to the temporary file. When you click on “save document” it saves from this temporary file down to your real document file on disk. More temporary files are generated when you change things. (You have probably noticed that you can undo things you have typed) Very clever. Temporary files are kept of your original document several times back that enables you to go back and undo (or redo) things.

Finished! , Hit the power off button. Now if you had closed MS word down and shut down windows properly all these temp files would have been neatly cleaned up and deleted.

Heck, I’ve just hit the power off button. MS word and windows have not had the time to do this I have just chopped them off at the neck.

When you switch on your PC again windows no longer knows about these temp files because all the pointers to them have gone so there they stay.

You continue being naughty, your disk gradually gets more and more crud you may even end up with more crud than good stuff eventually, especially if you are a heavy user of MS Word. You can get some big and lots of temp files there.

Well let’s give a bit of help. Start with yourself, whenever you finish close down any programs you are using and close down windows properly. (You know, click start bottom left corner then click “Turn off Computer”)

Lets get rid of that stuff in the recycle bin.

There are three ways of doing this, easy, harder and easier.

Let’s start with “easy”. If you have a “recycle bin” icon on your desktop perform the following.

1. Left “double click” on it.
2. A window should open that shows in the right pane all your files and documents in the recycle bin.
3. In the left pane at top left you will find “empty the recycle bin ”left click” on it.
4. All the files and documents will disappear.

And that’s it, simple isn’t it.

Now if you do not have a “recycle” icon on your desktop, (sometimes happens) you will have to do it harder.

1. Go into your file Manager. (what’s “file manager”)
File manager allows you to manage your files and documents (copy, delete etc. But of course you knew this.)
2. “Right” click on “start” in the bottom left corner of your desktop.
3. “Left” click on “explorer” (this is not Internet explorer. Microsoft called it this jut to confuse you)
4. You will get a window that shows you all your folders in the left pane and all your files in the right pane.
5. In the left pane scroll down to the bottom until you see “recycle bin”
6. “Left” click on it and you will see all the files showing in the right panel.
7. “Right” click on the “recycle” bin folder and then click on “empty recycle bin”
8. Voila! All gone.

Now before I go to the “easier” way I though I should mention some thing about all those “temporary” files. There is an easy way and a hard way of getting rid of them.

I am not going to tell you the hard way because you may delete things you shouldn’t.

Now for the easier way of deleting things in the “recycle” bin (why didn’t I tell you this first? - I wanted to put you through a few hoops)

The easier way gets rid of stuff in the recycle bin and all those temporary files as well. All you have to do is down load a program from here http://www.filehippo.com/download_ccleaner and install it. (It’s free) All you have to do then is run it and click the icon and then “run cleaner” and it will get rid of all those files in your recycle bin as well as all those “orphaned” temporary files plus a few other things as well.

All you have to do is to remember to maybe run this program about once a month and you will be OK.

Just one useful suggestion, if you are deleting large files (such as video files which may be gigabytes in size) It may be useful to stop them going to the recycle bin. As long as you are sure you do not want to recover them you can stop them going by:

In file manager normally you would just press the ”delete” key. If instead if you hold the shift key down and then pressed the “delete” key this will delete it and also stop it going to the “recycle” bin.

Now it is hopeful that your windows xp slow startup problem has been fix a bit more. Please see my next post as there is something else you can do that may improve it even further.

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Posted by Wilf Gerrard-Staton on Thursday, September 20th, 2007 at 8:00 am.