Over time as you install programs, photos, video files, and other items your hard drive begins to fill up. It is important that you never completely fill up the hard drive or your system will not have space necessary to operate. You may have files and programs on your system that you never use or can archive off to a removable storage device.

The Disk Cleanup utility is a tool Microsoft provides to help you keep your hard drive cleaned up. All you have to do it to run it on a regular basis. The tool will identify items that can be removed safely. You have the option to remove them or not. It will also empty the recycle bin, remove the temporary Internet files, remove Java applets and other downloaded program files, and remove temporary Windows files. The utility will also allow you to remove components of Windows that are optional and you do not use as well as being able to uninstall software you no longer use.

You can also compress files that are older to save space. This will not remove any files it will just compress them if they have not been accessed in a specific time frame. If you do ever access these files it may take a little longer as they will have to be decompressed before they are opened.

After you run all the above utilities and archive off and delete any files you can you should then run the Windows Disk Defragmenter. This will organize the remaining files and programs so that your computer will run even faster.