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CompTIA A+ Certification All-in-One Exam Guide

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Figure 14-11 Accessing remote computers

If you scroll down through the list, you will see a choice to compress old

files. What do you know—Disk Cleanup does more than just delete files! In

fact, this file compression trick is where Disk Cleanup really, uh, cleans up.

This is one of the few choices where you will gain the most space. The other

big heavyweight category is Temporary Internet Files, which Disk Cleanup

will delete. Try Disk Cleanup on a computer that gets hours of Internet use

every day and you’ll be pleased with the results.

NOTE Just because you can get back disk space does not mean that using

Disk Cleanup is a free lunch. Cleaning many of these options, like the

selected-by-default Image Thumbnails, can cause your computer to run a

little slow until Windows rebuilds those caches.

Registry Maintenance

The Registry is a huge database that Windows updates every time you add a

new application or hardware or make changes to existing applications or

hardware. As a result, the Registry tends to be clogged with entries that are

no longer valid. These usually don’t cause any problems directly, but they

can slow down your system. Interestingly, Microsoft does not provide a

utility to clean up the Registry. To clean your Registry, you need to turn to a

third-party utility. Quite a few Registry cleaner programs are out there, but

my favorite is the freeware CCleaner by Piriform (see Figure 14-12). You can

download the latest copy at www.piriform.com/ccleaner/. (Pay attention

when downloading and installing not to add extra programs, just get the free

version—unless you want tech support from Piriform; then by all means

support the company with some cash.)

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