System Cleanup
Every now and then, your computer - in my case, a Dell Inspiron E510 - will need some TLC. Freeing up disk space and running defrag can go a long way to keeping your system running better. I spent an hour or so yesterday doing some housekeeping and ended up deleting over 45+ gigabytes of old videos, unused applications and more. Today, my system feels zippier and more responsive. All of my core applications - Photoshop, Illustrator, Dreamweaver - are running better than usual. Consider this a friendly nudge to do the same on your own computer, if you’re not already doing it.
Beat ya to it. I nuked my hard drive with DBAN, re-formatted, and re-installed Windows twice this year. The second time I took the opportunity to properly partition my hard-drive so I could dual-boot Linux and put my data on a different partition than the OS.
I was careful to only re-install apps that I still use. My system is more also responsive.
Something else I recommend is using the task scheduler to schedule run dskchk and a defrag (if needed) every once in a while. Mine is scheduled for every two weeks.
The next order of business is opening up my case and cleaning all the dust out. I shudder just to think about it since the box is several years old and hasn’t had a good cleaning.