Honestapete! I used to understand PCs

[wmw999 2,534]

But I don't any more

I've been trying to clean up my netbook; it has a 16 gig hard drive, and I was down to my last 100 meg. With some cleaning (and cleaning up after the crap that uninstall leaves around) I still have less than 3 gig of HD space left.

I'm starting to feel like the guy who says "my Piglet gets me to the ground just fine."

I uninstall Adobe (to do a clean install) and it leaves crap all over the place. WTF can I keep and what can I ditch?

I feel old. But I have about 3 gig of HD, I can compact, and then go re-install Adobe eventually. But all of the duplicate files are incredibly frustrating, and a sign of incredibly lazy programming to me.

Wendy P.

There is nothing more dangerous than breaking a basic safety rule and getting away with it. It removes fear of the consequences and builds false confidence. (tbrown)

[DSE 5]

Adobe what? Bridge? Acrobat? Pshop?

You can run uninstall kleenup tools.
Knowing which Adobe product might help me help you clean it out. Adobe does leave a lot of mouse-droppings, especially if it's one of their suites.

[wmw999 2,534]

Acrobat. But that was just an example. So much stuff came bundled, too. I don't know WTF I have a bluetooth app -- the hardware profile says no BT device is attached to the computer, and neither my husband nor I use one.

But I did just discover the camera built in . I guess I'd better not use it nekkid huh

Wendy P.

There is nothing more dangerous than breaking a basic safety rule and getting away with it. It removes fear of the consequences and builds false confidence. (tbrown)

[DSE 5]

Quote

But I did just discover the camera built in . I guess I'd better not use it nekkid huh

Wendy P.

Most of us wouldn't mind....

K, so if you've uninstalled, but still have pieces, you can manually go after every hidden and unhidden folder, or you can use a tool like Revo http://www.revouninstaller.com/

I think they have a demo/timed version.

You can also uninstall any apps you don't want first, then run a tool like Revo.
Go to Start/Run and in the Run dialog, type "%temp%" (less the quotes).
Delete all files that come up. That'll prolly help.

[tkhayes 348]

you can get a new hard drive for cheap, probably $60 or so, have 120-320Gb of space and most likely a faster drive.

But once you put in a 5400rpm drive and max out your memory for the machine, that is about the last upgrades that you can do to it. Might buy you another year or two of use.

Simple programs like Acronis and such can image you old drive and restore it to the new drive, expanding the partition size as they do it, or maybe your local geek shop can do it all for you as well.

www.dell.com. New 1545 laptops for about $400 or so. My wife got one and it is a pretty nice machine I must say.

[kallend 2,106]

Hey, I used to write software for Los Alamos National Lab (in fact, I think they still use it) and for the US Naval Research Lab. I once wrote a 3-d graphics package with hidden line removal in assembly language when PCs were slow, no commercial packages existed, there was nothing built into hardware or MS DOS to do it, and assembler was the only way to go.

Now I can't fathom Windows, and especially I have a hard time getting all my various PCs on my home network to talk to each other.

...

The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

[wmw999 2,534]

I used to be able to go through my PC and clean everything by hand. I knew what was there, and I didn't need 2 (count 'em 2!) identical copies of driver.cab, and a modem.cab for a frickin' netbook . I won't be installing a new modem, or a hard drive, or much of anything else most likely. I might someday want to connect it to a printer, though.

But it's all black boxes to me. And yeah, each one isn't that huge, but when you add them up it's a bunch.

Edit to add: Yes, I'm whining and yes, I've done a bunch of googling.

Wendy P.

There is nothing more dangerous than breaking a basic safety rule and getting away with it. It removes fear of the consequences and builds false confidence. (tbrown)

[MF42 0]

I found IObit unistaller a little while ago. It cleaned out some crap that a couple other free uninstall tools missed. All those leftovers do have a tendency to build up pretty quick.

Matt

[Herky 0]

Sounds like the problem is the 16gb hard drive. Don't know how much space you will get after just removing fragments of programs, but memory is fairly cheap.

[wmw999 2,534]

It's a netbook; not supposed to have a lot on it. That's why I was so surprised. Seems "miminal" doesn't mean much any more

Wendy P.

There is nothing more dangerous than breaking a basic safety rule and getting away with it. It removes fear of the consequences and builds false confidence. (tbrown)

[Andy9o8 2]

Quote

Honestapete!

Keep the filth off the boards, please.

[theonlyski 8]

Clicky

That will let you delete all kinds of crap you probably dont even know about. For the paranoid, it also allows you to set a secure delete with overwrite... but you dont peg me as that kinda person.

"I may be a dirty pirate hooker...but I'm not about to go stand on the corner." iluvtofly
DPH -7, TDS 578, Muff 5153, SCR 14890
I'm an asshole, and I approve this message

[kallend 2,106]

Quote

Clicky

That will let you delete all kinds of crap you probably dont even know about. For the paranoid, it also allows you to set a secure delete with overwrite... but you dont peg me as that kinda person.

Ok, so they claim "But the best part is that it's fast (normally taking less than a second to run) and contains NO Spyware or Adware!"

Why should I believe that?

...

The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

[theonlyski 8]

Quote

Quote

Clicky

That will let you delete all kinds of crap you probably dont even know about. For the paranoid, it also allows you to set a secure delete with overwrite... but you dont peg me as that kinda person.

Ok, so they claim "But the best part is that it's fast (normally taking less than a second to run) and contains NO Spyware or Adware!"

Why should I believe that?

The only part of the software that could be considered ad-ware is the yahoo toolbar that it will install unless you uncheck it (its very simple to do).

If you dont believe that it works and its free, dont use it... I dont care

"I may be a dirty pirate hooker...but I'm not about to go stand on the corner." iluvtofly
DPH -7, TDS 578, Muff 5153, SCR 14890
I'm an asshole, and I approve this message

[theonlyski 8]

Quote

Quote

Clicky

That will let you delete all kinds of crap you probably dont even know about. For the paranoid, it also allows you to set a secure delete with overwrite... but you dont peg me as that kinda person.

Ok, so they claim "But the best part is that it's fast (normally taking less than a second to run) and contains NO Spyware or Adware!"

Why should I believe that?

Clicky

There, thats just for you! You sound like you could use a set...

"I may be a dirty pirate hooker...but I'm not about to go stand on the corner." iluvtofly
DPH -7, TDS 578, Muff 5153, SCR 14890
I'm an asshole, and I approve this message

[JohnMitchell 16]

I'm a PC neophyte, and I'm trying to teach myself to work a Joomla webpage. Any advice for the Noob?

You guys and your laments are making me start to worry.

[theonlyski 8]

Quote

I'm a PC neophyte, and I'm trying to teach myself to work a Joomla webpage. Any advice for the Noob?

You guys and your laments are making me start to worry.

Clicky

That should get you started.








sorry, had to do it, but it should help

"I may be a dirty pirate hooker...but I'm not about to go stand on the corner." iluvtofly
DPH -7, TDS 578, Muff 5153, SCR 14890
I'm an asshole, and I approve this message

[JohnMitchell 16]

Thanks, I needed that.

I'm actually right in the middle of a tutorial, but it's a lot like showing a pocket watch to a hog. I'm slogging along like someone who doesn't speak the language.

Thanks again for the laugh.

[tkhayes 348]

CClean is fairly well know and fairly well used. Pretty legit stuff.

[skyrider 0]

Has anyone ever "Lied to Pete?"

[tkhayes 348]

yes, but if you google something, you can generally find out if it has bad things in it, and there appear to be none.

There are plenty of geeks out there that take assembled code like that, disassemble it and find out exactly what it does, or does not do - to refute or support the author's claims.

So again, CCleaner, while not perfect, is likely not dangerous to your system.

Or you could just buy a Mac, and be done with all the annoyances of the PC

[DSE 5]

Quote

Or you could just buy a Mac, and be done with all the annoyances of the PC

And then you'd just have the annoyances of a Mac (I use both daily).

[kallend 2,106]

Quote

CClean is fairly well know and fairly well used. Pretty legit stuff.

Yeah, but one of the first things a con-artist says is "Would I lie to you"? That's why I prefer an independent evaluation.

Congrats on your new rating.

...

The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

[Andy9o8 2]

Quote

CClean is fairly well know and fairly well used. Pretty legit stuff.

I have CCleaner on my computers, and I like it. Not too big, and seems to work great. Cleans out all sorts of extraneous shit from various caches and the registry that you don't need and is hogging up space. I run it at least once a day (after the first time, the whole process takes less than a minute).

Here are some good reviews:

http://download.cnet.com/ccleaner/

http://www.softpedia.com/reviews/windows/CCleaner-Review-16983.shtml

http://www.piriform.com/ccleaner/reviews

[futuredivot 0]

I got technologically left behind shortly after
10 X="blow me"
20 print x;

You are only as strong as the prey you devour