Beyond unnecessary temporary files, your PC may be bogged down with a slew of installed and unused applications. We’re all guilty of installing various utilities on our systems for testing or trial purposes, but in general not so good at removing these programs once we’re finished with them. Over time, your PC’s registry can become filled with relatively useless data for unused programs, not to mention the disk space occupied by those programs. For best performance, you should really make a point of adding “remove unnecessary applications” to your monthly maintenance task list.
Removing programs from a Windows system is easily accomplished by running an uninstall program if one was included with the application, or by using the Add or Remove Programs applet in Control Panel. In fact, if you’ve already got the Disk Cleanup program open, you can access Add or Remove Programs by clicking the Clean up button on the More Options tab (on XP systems). When Add or Remove Programs opens, click the programs that you want to remove to highlight them, and then click the Remove button. While the impact on system performance won’t be huge as a result of removing unused programs, it will lead to a smaller Registry and increase the amount of available disk space at your disposal.
