This week, I’ve decided I’m tired of my computer as it is. It’s becoming slow, unresponsive, and generally more and more useless to me. Since I neither have the money for nor need a new computer, I’m just going to make better the one I’ve already got.

My hunch is that a lot of other people are in the same situation I am – too many applications, too much clutter, and not enough usefulness and responsiveness from your computer. So, during this week, as I move to get rid of the clutter on my computer, I’m going to share the tips and tools I’ve discovered to make my computer work better for me.

The first step toward computing bliss is cutting the crap. Big files, old programs, and all kinds of other useless stuff has made its way onto my hard drive over the three years I’ve owned this computer. Here are the three (free) applications I used to get rid of almost all of it.

nCleaner

nCleaner is one of my favorite applications to use, because of how exciting it is to free up tons of space on my hard drive. nCleaner does mostly things Windows can do already, but does it all far better than Windows. There’s a series of cleaning tools to get rid of old, unused files, a nice way to manage which programs start with your computer, and a number of other great tools.

Basically, nCleaner’s various tools hunt through your computer and its applications, looking for files, logs, and all kinds of other stuff that you never knew was there, and you’ll never notice is gone. It’s a simple application to use (but be careful – it DOES delete things permanently), and is always good for a couple of GB free on my hard drive.

Revo Uninstaller

The “Add or Remove Programs” menu in Windows is awful. It’s slow to load, incomplete in its uninstalling, and doesn’t actually get rid of a lot of applications. Revo Uninstaller, on the other hand, does its due diligence. It brings up a list of all the applications installed on your computer, and lets you literally destroy every shred of evidence that they ever existed.

There are a variety of different levels of uninstall-power from Revo, from the most basic (which just runs the included uninstaller) to a super-powerful (which scans your whole hard drive for any trace of the application). It looks through the registry, your documents, and everywhere else to get rid of everything you won’t need anymore.

Revo also offers some other features – the Junk cleaner and startup manager in particular – but I never use them. They’re not as good as nCleaner, but the uninstaller is so good it’s worth the download of Revo.

TreeSize

It’s ridiculous how fast my hard drive space disappears. Usually, it’s not even my fault. Things like System Restore points, random application data, and the like all take up way more space on my computer than I’m okay with.

What TreeSize does is tell you where your hard drive space is going. It creates a tree-like structure of the folders on your computer, sorted by size. You’ll see which folders are huge and should be, like music and videos, and ones that are much bigger than you wanted (like system restore points). You can open any of the folders, delete files directly from TreeSize, and free up all kinds of space on your computer.

So go. Clear some junk off of your computer. Next, I’m going to eliminate the applications I don’t need, and share with you what made the cut and what didn’t.

How do you keep the computer crap to a minimum?

Photo: Rev Dan Catt