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Windows: 7 / 8 / 10 – Maintenance – Hard Drive Cleanup

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Created – January 16, 2020 by Elian Figueiredo
Modified –
Prerequisites –

One of the easiest ways to free up user hard drive space is by using the Disk Cleanup utility which is included in Windows.

Windows 7

Open Disk Cleanup by going to Start, All Programs, Accessories, System Tools, Disk Cleanup.

Windows 8

To open Disk Cleanup from the desktop, swipe in from the right edge of the screen, tap Settings (or if you’re using a mouse, point to the lower-right corner of the screen, move the mouse pointer up, and then click Settings), tap or click Control Panel, type Admin in the Search box, tap or click Administrative Tools, and then double-tap or double-click Disk Cleanup.

Windows 10

In the Search Field type Disk Cleanup.

You will see the following window once you click on Disk Cleanup:

Click OK to continue the process.

  • If you only have a C drive, you’ll see this window straight away:

Scroll down and check “Recycle Bin” and “Temporary files” (If you don’t have anything important on your Downloads folder, you can check this option as well)

Click Ok.

Click Delete Files to confirm that you want to remove the files.

You will see the following window as the program removes files from your computer. The window will automatically disappear when it has finished cleaning your hard drive.

For All Versions

To free up more space on your hard drive you can uninstall programs that you no longer use.

To do this, go into the Control Panel (you can search for control panel from the start menu):

Click “Program and Features”.

Now look through the list and remove any software that you no longer want/need (NOTE: Only remove programs you know you installed and now no longer need – some programs may be required for your organization. Check with your System Administrator before removing programs that don’t know or are unfamiliar with) by clicking on the name of the program and then clicking the “Uninstall” button.

Go back to Control Panel once again, then click “System”:

The window below will appear, click on “Advanced system settings” (this will require administrative rights, if you’re not able to open this option, contact your System Administrator)

Under “User Profiles” section, click Settings.

Select ONLY the “Account Unknown”, then click “Delete”. * Sometimes, there’s more than one unknown account, you can delete all of the unknown accounts.

IMPORTANT, DO NOT delete any of the other users, this will cause data loss, only do the “unknown” ones.

** If this is not sufficient to free up enough space, please contact LogDev for further cleanup.