[Mad Hatter]

This afternoon I rang Virgin Media about paying for my line rental a year in advance. I spoke to a very helpful lady in the Phillipines, she is going to ring me back on 10 December and take the payment.

I have had a problem with my anti-virus so she put me through to another very helpful lady in India. This lady has been able to operate my computer and get it all sorted out for me. She has also downloaded a Back up and Storage package for me. We ticked on various things I would like to store and it said 14.7 gigabytes and I am only allowed 5. She suggested I delete cookies and temporary files.

Can you please tell me, in a nutshell, in easy terms how to do this please and thanks in advance.

[anniebrion]

Download CCleaner it removes unwanted files etc...

[ashe17]

I don't think it's possible to have almost 10GB of cookies or temp files.

[Mad Hatter]

Thanks for your replies.

When we did an estimate of the size we had clicked on a lot of the boxes, photos, documents, my computer, etc. But I dont download music or films - is CCleaner very very easy to use as I am not overly confident and would hate to click on the wrong thing and do harm somewhere along the line.

[anniebrion]

CCleaner is quite safe and only deletes stuff you select and only offers stuff that is not needed, you just tick the stuff you want cleaned and it also has an analyse mode to show you what it is going to remove.

[Mad Hatter]

Thanks, it sounds quite straight forward. Will the programme give me simple and clear instructions please.

[anniebrion]

Originally Posted by Mad Hatter

Thanks, it sounds quite straight forward. Will the programme give me simple and clear instructions please.

You have spent more time asking about it that it would have taken you to download and try it out and found out how very easy it is to use

[radioanorak]

Just go to tools & options in your browser
Select privacy tab & select those items you want to delete
A bit risky to let ANYONE have contol of your computer

[chrisjr]

Originally Posted by ashe17

I don't think it's possible to have almost 10GB of cookies or temp files.

I installed CCleaner on a PC at work to clean it up.

It got rid of 18GB of crap

[LION8TIGER]

Originally Posted by Mad Hatter

We ticked on various things I would like to store and it said 14.7 gigabytes and I am only allowed 5. She suggested I delete cookies and temporary files.

If the things you want to store come to 14.7 GB then I can't see how deleting cookies and temp files is going to make those things any smaller.
Ccleaner is great though !!

[Mad Hatter]

Just had a look and I have 1121 items in documents and 700 items in pictures.

What exactly will I have that is a size of 14.7 as I have no music or films stored on my computer.

I have had my laptop about 3 and a half years and I have never deleted any cookes or temporary files to date.

Thanks radioanorak for the clear instructions you gave and the lady was a member of staff at Virgin Media who updated my anti-virus as it was not working correctly.

[LION8TIGER]

If all your documents are in one folder just right click the folder and under the general tab it will tell you the collective size and the same with your pictures if they are in the same folder.
Open my computer and right click your C drive and click properties, it will give you the total space you have used, what does that come to ?

[Mad Hatter]

My computer 98.6 GB
Documents 372 bytes
Pictures 14.7 GB

[dohboy]

Why are you including your temp folder in your backup anyway?

It sounds like you have included your entire profile folder which contains application files and other stuff which you definitely don't need to include. You probably just need to be more selective about what you want to backup.

[LION8TIGER]

700 pictures using 14.7GB = 21.5 MB average which does not sound right, maybe 'pictures' includes video ?

[jsmith99]

The OP seems to be confusing two things:

deleting cookies and temporary files

backing up their data.

The first can be done via the operating system, but they should definitely download Ccleaner, since, among other benefits it allows retention of desired cookies.

Unless VM has improved in the last few years, I wouldn't use their backup system. You need external storage, usually an external drive, but you could use cheap flash drives.

The software used will depend on the OS, but you could actually transfer everything manually (My Documents, Pictures, etc., email, cookies and favourites.).

[Mad Hatter]

I did begin to transfer photos to disc to save them.

Have been looking at sizes of things, I have saved some power point presentations and for example one about elephants is 6,665KB, I have a letter where I have put photographs in and the size of that is 19,482kb, I have a video downloaded but it is of a conversation recorded and that is 767mb, OCR is 9,63KB and Scan 650MB. I reckon I may have, for example, my contacts saved twice, I do have video clips but they are in documents, I think. I also have a lot of bank statements saved, perhaps I ought to put them on a separate disc.

Help? (Sorry, it doesnt take much to confuse me).

Best I download CCleaner and have a clear out.

[max99]

Originally Posted by Mad Hatter

My computer 98.6 GB
Documents 372 bytes
Pictures 14.7 GB

Double-check and confirm that the Pictures folder is definitely 14.7GB. If it's correct, you probably have a bunch of video clips also stored in there.

[LION8TIGER]

Documents 372 bytes

That is the size of the icon with nothing in it, I made a shortcut of my documents to the desktop and it was 373bytes.

[evil c]

I was just wondering whether you ever defragment your hard disk seeing as how you don't keep up with the housekeeping. Once you've cleared out all the rubbish, then I recommend you carry out a defrag, and after that use CCleaner at least once a week and set up a schedule to auto defrag the hard disk. It depends which operating system you have as to how often you do this.

Also it sound like you need to organise your folders so you know what's in them and set up new folders to keep documents separate from video clips, for example. You need to read up on what you should be doing, otherwise one day you'll end up in a real mess, and you'll only have yourself to blame.

[Mad Hatter]

Been looking in my pictures this afternoon and there are video clips in there that I have copied from my camcorder, some are
88.1MB
3.72MB
13.0MB
1.26
343
144
In my pictures there is a folder entitled ControlCenter3 and that is 650MB. I think I have folders duplicated.

I did start doing a defragmentation a while ago and it was doing it for ages and I think I cancelled it in the end because it was on for days. Think I am already in a mess now!

[jsmith99]

Originally Posted by evil c

............. You need to read up on what you should be doing, otherwise one day you'll end up in a real mess, and you'll only have yourself to blame.

On the other hand, the OP's laissez fair attitude over the last 3.5 years seems to have caused no real problems, other than clutter. Compare that with those who play around with their settings and the registry without really knowing what they're doing.

[jsmith99]

Originally Posted by Mad Hatter

.......... Think I am already in a mess now!

Ok, prove me wrong.

Did you create the folder called ControlCentre3? It sounds more like a folder which has been accidenally dragged from a software folder. Can you see what's in it?

EDIT : Just noticed it's ControlCenter3; definitely not the Derbyshire spelling.

[Mad Hatter]

Just been looking in C:\Users\my name\Pictures
ControlCenter3 has 3 folders, Ocr, PhotoCapture and Scan and has 225 files. (ControlCenter3 is a folder that when I scan a document on my Brother Printer, it goes into there).

There is also in there Documents Shortcut, a Google Chrome icon, Music Shortcut, Sample Pictures.

There are 40 separate folders of photos in My Pictures too.

I am very sorry about all this, but I do confess, I would worry if I started trying to do things when I am not sure what I am doing then make a right mess of things.

I really do appreciate all your help and thanks very much.

[evil c]

Do you know anybody who is proficient with computers who could help you to sort out all your problems. Any friends with computer savvy sons or daughters?