PCTips Box

You may be able to free up some valuable space if you’re using two disk partitions, using two physical drives, or dual-booting between XP and Vista on the same machine.

I’ll show you several steps you can take to eliminate duplicate files and get more out of your disks.

Decide on your multiple-partition strategy

Years ago, it was common for users seeking more reliability to divide a hard drive into two or more partitions: portions of a disk, each with a different drive letter. Back then, recovering data from drive d: was easier than from drive c: if the primary partition (containing Windows) became corrupted.

That configuration is rare today, because backup programs and disaster-recovery services have improved. But there are still three situations in which you might find yourself handling two or more partitions or physical disks: (more…)

My tips explained how to set up a Vista machine to dual-boot between that OS and Windows XP.

But booting to XP on a dual-boot system has the negative side-effect of deleting any Vista restore points, in addition to all but its latest backup file, and a Registry workaround is required to prevent this.

XP dual-boot is not system-restore friendly

Ian Brown was the first to describe an unfortunate fact of dual-booting XP and Vista: (more…)

Sooner or later most of us have to confront the problem of running out of hard disc space. Usually there’s no alternative but to bite the bullet and delete some files and applications, upgrade to a larger hard drive, install a second hard drive, or if the PC is coming to the end of the road, buy a new one. However, it may be possible to delay the inevitable by scanning your drive with this freeware utility. It’s called DoubleKiller and its job is to track down and eradicate duplicate files. You would probably be surprised how many duplicate files you accumulate over time, I found several hundred megabytes worth on a quite modestly well-used office PC. (more…)

Have you ever come across a really cool video on the web and want to download it to your hard drive, but the site doesn’t have the functionality? This is no longer a problem with the UnPlug Firefox Extension.

Simply put, this add-on allows you to download embedded media on a web page to your computer. From the description: (more…)

I was at my parent’s place and discovered that their home PC’s system partition was nearly full. Naturally the easiest way to free up some storage is to simply delete files that aren’t necessary on the hard drive - particularly in the c:\windows directory.

Here’s some quick ways to clear out some unneeded files and free up some space on your system partition. (more…)

As you know over time the Windows filing system can become disorganised and this will eventually lead to a slow down and a reduction in performance. Defragging the hard drive can restore order but most of us forget to do it regularly and leave it until the system has started to slow down. Here is a way to program Windows to automatically Defrag your drives once a month or every few weeks. (more…)