Your PC’s Windows install needs spring cleaning too. Here’s how to do it

Just like how dust collects in your humble abode during the winter months, your PC can also accumulate superfluous files and folders over a period of time. To make room for new programs and photos, you’ve got to give your computer a good cleaning. Fortunately, Windows offers a whole range of built-in functions and tools to help with this task. There are also third-party programs that can analyze your system and identify unnecessary files.

Remove programs that are no longer needed

Many users install software for one task and then never touch again.

As part of the spring clean, you should specifically search for these programs and uninstall them.

To do this, open the Windows 11 Start menu, click on All, and carefully go through the list of installed applications. If you find a program that you no longer need, right-click on it and click on Uninstall.

Windows uses the relevant uninstall routine to remove programs. However, this often does not work properly and leaves behind various folders and files on the hard drive.

Specialized uninstall tools such as the full version of Ascomp Cleaning Suite, Revo Uninstaller, or Iobit Unistaller are more thorough.

They track down files, folders, and registry entries left behind by uninstall programs and delete them.

Revo Uninstaller has a hunting mode in which you drag a crosshair over the icon of the program to be removed on the desktop or in the taskbar.

After right-clicking, you can then remove the software without an uninstall routine or remove it from Windows Autostart.

Remove unnecessary Windows apps and system features

Windows sets up a whole range of system apps and games during installation, many of which you will never call up or cannot use at all.

These include, for example, weather and camera apps, Skype preview, or the two Xbox programs.

They cannot be removed via the list of apps in the Start menu. Instead, you need Powershell. Type Powershell in the search field of the taskbar and click on Run as administrator. The table below shows which command you can use to uninstall the respective app.

If you want to reinstall an app later, you can do this via the Microsoft Store.

Removing apps using the freeware version of Ccleaner is easier than entering Powershell commands manually. Under Extras > Uninstall, the tool displays a list of existing applications, which also includes apps from the Microsoft Store.

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In addition to its own apps, Windows also contains a number of features that are active by default but are not required by many users. You can access the associated switches by typing Control Panel into the search field in the taskbar and clicking on the relevant term.

In the icon view, click on Programs and Features and in the following window on Turn Windows features on or off.

As a home user, you can usually uncheck the boxes in front of “API support for remote differential compression,” “Windows Media Player Legacy (App)” under “Media features,” “Print and document services,” and “Host-enabled web kernel for Internet information services.”

Use Windows’ own cleaning service

Windows does not rely on external cleaning help when it comes to deleting unnecessary files and programs. The operating system comes with an internal cleaning service that can work automatically in the background, but can also be fine-tuned manually.

Windows 11 offers automatic maintenance of the hard drive memory. You can find it in the Settings of the operating system under System > Storage. Make sure that the switch for “Storage Sense” is set to On.

To check which areas are covered by Storage Sense, click on them once. In the next window, there should be a tick next to “Clean up temporary files.”

The switch for “Automatic User content cleanup” should also be set to On. You can retain the default setting for the options below.

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It is only worth considering setting the option “Delete files in my ‘Downloads’ folder that have not been opened for over” to “30 days.” In this way, you can ensure that Windows deletes files in your download folder under C:\Users\[your_name]\Downloads is cleaned up regularly. Once you have changed this setting, you can scroll down and click on “Run memory optimization now” to perform an initial cleaning run. It will start immediately.

There are other cleaning options in Windows. The classic one is Disk Cleanup — a tool that has been available in the operating system since time immemorial. You call it up by typing cleanmgr in the search field of the taskbar and clicking on the suggestion.

Now select a drive and click on OK. You can now also find most of the functions of this tool in the Settings of Windows 11 — for example under System > Storage > Cleanup recommendations.

In the following window, you can empty the recycle bin or clear the Downloads folder in your Windows profile. Click on “Show advanced options” to open a window with offers for deleting temporary files.

You can normally accept the default settings at this point. To delete, click on “Remove files” in the upper part of the window.

Then go back to the previous window by first clicking on the three dots next to “Temporary files” and then on “Cleanup recommendations.”

Scroll down and click on the down arrows next to “Large or unused files,” “Files synchronized with the cloud,” and “Unused apps.”

Take a look at the list of files and apps and tick everything you no longer need. Then click on the “Clean up X MB” button in each case.

Find and delete duplicate photos in large collections

High-resolution digital photos are among the biggest space hogs on your hard drive. It is therefore worth going through your own photo collection from time to time and looking for duplicates that can be deleted.

As such collections can often contain several thousand images, you should leave this work to software.

There are two groups of programs that search for duplicate photos: Some compare the photos based on the file names alone. Others are able to identify identical or even similar motifs.

This last group includes Duplicate Photos Fixer Pro, which is available in a free and a paid version. However, the differences are small.

The free version can only delete up to 15 images at the touch of a button, all others have to be removed manually. And you don’t get any support. Both versions work at high speed and with astonishing accuracy.

Reset Windows 11

Over time, Windows 11 accumulates all kinds of clutter — including orphaned folders and files, cache content, photos, and videos that are no longer needed and much more.

The easiest way to get rid of this junk data is to reinstall it. You don’t need a boot stick or other boot media to do this, but can use a Windows function.

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Attention: Before you start, you should always back up the data you want to keep. For example, copy email archives, locally stored photos, documents you still need, database files, and similarly important files to a second drive or to the cloud so that they are not lost.

Then get started: Open the Settings of Windows 11 and go to System > Recovery > Reset PC.

In the first window of the wizard, click on “Remove everything” and then on “Local reinstallation” — the “Cloud download” that is also offered can take several hours depending on the connection speed.

After clicking on Next and Reset, Windows will restore your PC to its original state.