Need Advice Regarding System Check!

[Joakim Agren]

Hello!

I have never cleaned up my system nor taken care of it in any way!

So I need advice on how to clean up my computer and check its health!.

I have about 5GB free out of 160GB so I neeed to clean up fast. Ofcouse I should delete som movie files and other personal files that I dont use anymore but what else should I check out for and how do I delete them?

I have Norton Antivirus Professional 2004 and it has something called Norton Protected Bin. Should I turn that one off?.

Which software do you recommend for disk and system maintenance?

I want to check the health of my physical drive, The integrity and health of the Registry and Windows XP in general,. So what's the best softwares to do this job?

How do I defrag my drive to make it faster?

Is it dangerous to defrag the drive am I at risk of losing data or screw up Windows?

[h1]

New firewall (AVG or NOD32), HDD Health, a ton of ad- / spy- / shitware-removing programs, a registry optimizer (Regcleaner, Regseeker), a good defragmenter (Diskkeeper), etc., etc.

Click on the top quarter or so of my sig.

[Xero Grid]

Free up Space?
Window Washer
Got to start menu > accessories > system tools > disk cleanup.
Cleaning up system restore makes a HUGE difference.

defrag? It's not dangerous. Just reboot after it's done.
Diskeeper is famous, but I just use the one built into XP. It does fine for standard maintenance, but since you've never done it before... it'll take a while.

NORTON SUCKS!! And the Norton protected recycle bin is another way to save precious viruses.
Get a real antivirus. NOD32 or AVG (has a great free edition)

Spyware?
SpySweeper
Ad-Aware
Spyboy search and Destroy
are all easy to find

Tweakin it?
Black Viper knows how
X-Setup is the ultimate tweaking tool.
Xp-Antispy is good to have

The rest....
Regseeker
and google a search for NTRegOpt

This is a start. You should notice a sigificant difference when you're done.

-- Xero Grid --