7 steps to a lean, clean Windows machine

These days, a relatively clean and uncomplicated Windows 10 or 11 system disk might be home to more than 250,000 files and 90,000 folders. A more complex, application-heavy system disk might contain between half a million and a million files. My Windows 10 production PC has over 2.9M files and 750K folders, for example. My brand-new Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x Copilot+ PC has over 250K files and 55K folders. That’s a lot of stuff!

Indeed, all those files need not necessarily hang around. That’s why it’s a good idea to practice regular disk hygiene. This is exactly what is explained and explored here, with plenty of examples and screen shots to illustrate the cleanup process. Best of all, the tools that help you tidy up won’t cost you a dime.

Step 1: Run built-in Windows disk cleanup tools

From time immemorial, Windows has included a utility for cleaning up disk space — namely, Disk Cleanup, also known as cleanmgr.exe. In Windows 10 and 11, users gained a second method to clean up disk space as part of the Settings-based “Storage Sense” facility aimed at optimizing storage.

There has been speculation that Disk Cleanup might disappear as Settings takes over Windows management and controls. Even so, the Disk Cleanup utility remains ready, willing, and able to work in in Windows 10 22H2 and Windows 11 24H2 as I write this story. Either the Settings or Disk Cleanup approach provides a great way to excise extraneous and unneeded Windows files (for Windows 10 and 11 versions across the board).

Option A: Run Disk Cleanup

1. To launch Disk Cleanup, type disk clean or cleanmgr.exe into the Start menu search box.

2. The Disk Cleanup desktop app should appear at the top of those search results. If you can, select Run as administrator from the resulting options menu. Why? Only then does it offer to clean up redundant or outdated OS files (such as old OS files after an upgrade, or old updates) as well as other Windows leftovers.

3. Select the drive letter for the disk you wish to clean (for many readers this will start with the C: drive where Windows itself resides). Click the OK button to start Disk Cleanup on its merry way.

After Disk Cleanup scans your system’s C: drive, Figure 1 shows a reasonable facsimile of what you’ll see in Windows 11.

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When you run Disk Cleanup as Administrator, you can clear out previous Windows installations as well as other files. In the example shown here, the earlier Windows installation alone accounts for 25.4GB, with a total potential savings of 33.5GB. That’s a huge chunk of space.

4. Scroll through the checkbox items in the pane labeled “Files to delete” and pick stuff you’d like to lose. The numbers in the right column indicate how much disk space each item occupies. Don’t delete old OS versions or updates if you think you might want to roll back. Note also that the Downloads item represents the contents of your personal Downloads folder, so don’t delete it unless you’re sure you don’t need anything in there.

5. When you’ve made your selections for files to delete, click OK.

This process can — and often does — take several minutes to complete. While it’s running, it looks like what’s shown in Figure 2.

Ed Tittel / IDG

Option B: Clean up via Settings

Settings-based cleanup in Windows 10:

1. In Windows 10, navigate to Start > Settings > System > Storage > Configure Storage Sense or run it now > Free up space now.

2. On the “Free up space now” pane, click the Clean now button shown in Figure 3, lower left.

This cleans up storage in much the same way as if you’d run Disk Cleanup and clicked all available boxes — removing temporary files, update or upgrade files, delivery optimization files (designed for sharing on your local network but seldom used), obsolete device driver packages, and more. It will also empty the recycle bin. As with running Disk Cleanup, the “Free up space now” option in Settings often takes several minutes to run.

Settings-based cleanup in Windows 11:

Cleanup via Settings in Windows 11 works pretty much the same way, but looks quite different.

1. Navigate to Start > Settings > System > Storage Sense.

2. Scroll down and click the Run Storage Sense now button shown at the bottom of Figure 4.

When you do this, a progress indicator shows you it’s working: balls cycle from left to right, then repeat until it’s finished.

On another Windows 11 test PC, it reported, “We were able to free up 2.4GB of disk space.” Easy-peasy.

Step 2: Run PC Manager as a Disk Cleaner alternative

More properly identified as Microsoft PC Manager, this interesting Microsoft Store utility includes a wide-ranging, capable, and surprisingly fast Deep cleanup option, right on home screen. It’s at the lower left in Figure 5.

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1. To use it, simply click Deep cleanup, and a details screen appears with a list of potential cleanup targets, as shown in Figure 6.

Ed Tittel / IDG

Much like the options in Disk Cleanup (but more detailed), it’s a checkbox list of all the things that PC Manager finds that you can elect to clean up or not. By default, this facility checks the usual suspects, as you can see in Figure 6, where Windows Update cleanup items, error reports, temp files, and so forth are already checked.

2. Check the box next to any additional items you want to delete, and uncheck any items you don’t want to delete.

3. When you’ve made your selections, click the Proceed button at upper right to commence scrubbing!

When this facility finishes its work, it reports, “Cleanup completed” and shows the total amount of disk space freed up. Good stuff!

For more information about Microsoft PC Manager (which can do a lot more than clean up files), see section 4 of my November 2023 CW story “How to manually update Windows Defender.”

Step 3: Run UnCleaner to catch what Microsoft  tools miss

Josh Cell is a Francophone developer in Canada who’s built a peachy and free utility called UnCleaner. It can ferret out and remove temporary and obsolete log files that Windows’ built-in utilities and PC Manager don’t catch and kill. You can download the latest version of UnCleaner (1.7) from Major Geeks. Don’t worry that this tool shows a 2012 date: I can attest it still works fine on Windows 10 and 11 systems in mid-2024.

Running on the same production PC upon which I just ran Disk Cleanup and PC Manager’s Deep cleanup, UnCleaner found nearly 70MB of files to clean up despite a notionally clean status, as shown in Figure 7.

Ed Tittel / IDG

Simply click the Clean button (lower left) to excise those files. After I did so on my system, UnCleaner’s total for potential cleanup dropped to under 50MB.

You’ll never get this tool to delete everything it reports, because some of those files are locked by Windows runtime constraints. Sometimes — if rarely, in my experience — you’ll see a message that says, “Good. Your system is very clean.” ‘Nuff said!

Step 4: Use DriverStore Explorer to dismiss obsolete device drivers

DriverStore Explorer (RAPR.exe) is a free, open-source tool that you can download from GitHub. Always be sure to grab the most current release (0.11.92 as of this writing). Unless you’re a real Windows driver wizard, you need only click two buttons to make RAPR do its thing: Select Old Driver(s) and Delete Driver(s).

1. You must run RAPR in administrator mode (right-click its icon and select Run as administrator). When you start it up, it can take up to a minute to scan the contents of your PC’s driver store. Eventually, you’ll see a list of installed drivers with checkboxes.

2. Click the Select Old Driver(s) button at the top right of the screen, and the program will automatically check the boxes for the older driver versions it finds. They’re highlighted with blue checkmarks in Figure 8.

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Ed Tittel / IDG

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