casche cleaning

[bonnie]

can anyone please tell me were I go to clean out my casche as my comp, is running slow and I think this might nead clearing out but not sure were to find them I am using XP PRO.

or is there somthing else I should be looking at to speed it up again

[Miz]

Empty Internet Explorer's cache through Internet Explorer>Tools>Internet Options, click the "Delete Files" button.

Then you might want to do a general system cleanup.

1. Run Disk Cleanup: Start>Programs>Accessories>System Tools>Disk Cleanup and let it get rid of everything listed there
2. Go to this page download lspfix.exe and save it to the harddrive. You may not need it but if you do, you'll be real glad you got it
3. Go go into Control Panel>Add/Remove Programs and uninstall anything there you know you don't need. If you see anything about Newdot net and/or Gator, dump it.
4. Download, install, immediately update and then run Spybot and/or AdAware (you can use them both.) Let them clean up any spyware found.
5. Also get CWShredder and run it (link to the download is near the bottom of the page).

Note: If you cannot get online after steps 4 and 5, run the lspfix file you downloaded in Step 2 which should fix that problem.

6. Turn off XP's unnecessary services - a good guide is on Black Viper's site.
7. Stop unnecessary programs from loading on startup. Try to do that through each program's options/preferences. For those that don't offer that feature, use msconfig (Start>Run>type in "msconfig" (without the quotes), click OK, go to the Startup tab and uncheck those you are sure are not needed on startup). If you make changes in msconfig, ignore the warning message when you reboot. Just check the tiny box in the lower left referring to showing that warning on every boot and tell it "yes" you want to start in selective mode.
7. If problems still exist, do a complete system scan with at least two up-to-date antivirus programs. You can download the free AVG from Grisoft and you can do an online scan at either Housecall or Panda .
6. After scanning, close all running programs (right click on their icons in the System Tray - the area by the clock - and choose "Exit" or "Close" or whatever word that program uses to stop the program.
7. Go to Start>Programs>Accessories>System Tools>Disk Defragmenter and run it. If it's been a while since it's been run, it could take quite a while...an hour or more.

[ESALADUANE]

Good list, Miz.

I would like to add that although the Help text doesn’t explain it clearly, Disk Cleanup lists only files in your Temp folder that are more than one week old. If you want to completely clean this folder out you’ll need to do so manually. Close all running programs and type %temp% in the Run dialog box; from the resulting Windows Explorer window, delete everything you find. Some files are not available for deletion until you reboot.

[bonnie]

thank;s miz & esaladuane
I did what you said miz and tried a few things and also did what esaladuane said about deleting everything but and end of it all i did a "defragmentation" only to get a message at end of it saying it did not defrag all the files and a list of the files it did not defrag i was wondering why it did not defrag everything here is a list.

files that cannot be defragmented
\program files\windowupdate\tem xml
\programfiles\bigfix\_data\fixlet central\_local\site central
recycle\info2
\windows\memory.dmp
\windows\NTOSBOOT
\WINDOWS\INTERNETLOGS\tvdebug.log
\windows\internet\backup.RDB
\windows\internet\*******.LDB
\docunments and settings\administrator\local settings\temporary internet f
\documents and settings\administrator\local settings\temporary internet F
\documentsand settings\administrator\local settings\application \data\cor
is there a reason it would not defrag all any advise on this please would be apreciated.........bonnie