How To How to cleanup Windows 11

[Darkbreeze]

If you are looking to clean up Windows 11after a clean install, upgrade or just as a maintenance procedure to get rid of some clutter there are several things you can do to clean things up and improve system performance.

The following steps will help guide you through the process of getting Windows 11 polished up and running more efficiently.


The first thing you probably want to do is clean out the Windows Temporary folder. Navigate to the temp folder by clicking your start menu icon and selecting File Explorer.

Once you've opened File Explorer click on This PC to expand it then click on your C: drive, most often by default called Local Disk (C. Then, to the right, open the Windows folder.

Now, scroll to the Temp folder and open that.

You may see a message that says "You don't currently have permission to access this folder. Click continue to permanently get access to this folder" or a similar message.

Just click continue here.

Now, in the Temp folder, select ALL of the contents of this folder. Then, with the contents selected, right click on any of the selected files and from the context menu that appears choose Delete.

If you get a message asking if you really want to delete those files or that the size is too large and do you want to permanently delete them, click continue.

If you get any messages like this file is open elsewhere, or you require administrator permissions or anything other than confirmation to delete a specific file, just click skip. If there is an option to do the same for any other conflicts,

then put a check mark in the box next to that option and THEN click skip or next. At this point, there should not be any remaining files in the temp folder except for those that you have skipped because they were in use or required special permissions.

If it's just a permissions problem, first try moving forward with it, unlike with "in use" as it may just want your approval first. Moving on.



Again, you will need to right click the start menu but this time you will want to select "Run".

Then, in the Run box dialogue you will type in "Disk cleanup". In the results pane you will see the option for disk cleanup and you will click on that.

Next, choose EVERYTHING, meaning, put a check mark next to EVERY single item that is listed, unless you have a very good reason for excluding one of them. If you do, that is fine.

You will want to scroll down while checking items as there are many items not automatically listed in the initial showing. Then click "Ok".

Next, you are going to do the EXACT same thing again, starting from Disk Cleanup, except THIS time you are going to click on "Clean up system files" when you get to the disk cleanup options.

And again you are going to put a check mark next to ALL of the listed options. Don't worry, these are all things that it is totally safe to eliminate. The system will protect you against accidental deletion of anything important. In fact, it simply won't allow it

without administrator rights and also substantial approval. Never the case, in THIS case. Windows cleanup KNOWS it's business and there is ZERO chance of creating a problem here. Again, you will want to scroll down and make sure that ALL boxes
are checked.

It WILL ask you if you are sure, as with other screens, that you want to delete these files. The answer in every part of this guide is going to be yes.

There are a some other options that I RECOMMEND, but are not necessarily "essential" that can help to clean up Windows 11 (And also other versions of Windows) and help to streamline things and eliminate crap that isn't helping it to run well.

One of them is the BS called "system restore", also known as "system protection". What you do here is totally up to you but I recommend disabling it. It never works right anyhow when you need it to, and hasn't, through about at least three Windows versions.

What I DO recommend is that you have a DIFFERENT plan in place for creating system image backups like Macrium reflect, Acronis true image or some other trusted process. Believing in Windows disk images like system restore is just asking for a giant kick in the tenders later

because rarely does it work or in fact, actually, more importantly, rarely does it not either create problems or just plain bork your entire Windows installation anyhow. So, much better to have your own third party backup established if you don't want to have

just do a clean install every time a problem comes up. Here is how you'll disable this which will not only eliminate a lot of random system resource usage at the very least opportune times, which is likely to take away from something else you are trying to do, but will also recover

a fair amount of drive space from the images that it has ALREADY created.


IF you choose to do this, again type Advanced system settings into the search dialogue box, then click on the results.

In some configurations you may only get the system settings screen and will need to scroll down and click on the advanced system settings link. Once you've done that, click on the "System protection" tab.

On the System protections tab screen click on "Configure".

On the next screen you will want to to click next to the option for "Disable system protection", and don't worry, you REALLY are NOT losing anything here because it never works anyhow, as I said before. And when it "does" it is not what you expect.

Also click the box where it says "Delete" to remove any previously saved "restore" images, and this will usually reclaim a fair amount of drive space all by itself.

Follow those prompts to do so, and then click "Ok" as you back out of these options.

For most people this will be all that is needed to get the majority of the OS cleaned up. But there are still a few other things you can do to go a little further.



If you game, and have game folders like Steam etc., you can of course go into your game loader and "Uninstall" any games that were previously installed that you do not wish to play anymore or not at this time. You can always reinstall them later and that is

almost never a bad idea anyhow so long as it is still a title supported by the manufacturer or the store you got it from because the next time it will likely include any updates that might not have previously been there for you. Or if you have game folders that got orphaned because of a borked

Windows installation that you had to abandon, so they never were removed, you can simply go to those folders and delete them.



In some cases, if you've set them up to be that way, they might be on a different drive than the one your Windows or other OS is installed on.

Lastly, and I'm not going to go into great detail on this one because there are already a fair number of guides on how to do this, you might want to take a look at what is actually INSTALLED on Windows by typing Control into the search box, opening Control panel and choosing

the Programs and features option. Uninstall anything that you KNOW for sure you put there previously but do not need or want now. If you are unsure, Google is a really good source, as always, in helping to determine if something

that is installed is actually needed or not. If it is something from Intel, AMD, Adobe, Microsoft or the manufacturer of one of your components, you will want to look and question the removal of that very closely before removing it. If in doubt, PM me, I'd be happy to help in that regard.

Hopefully this helps to get things in a little better shape than they were before.​

 

[Colif]

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