Disk Cleanup

If you're running out of space on your hard drive on a Windows PC, try running Disk Cleanup. To run it, right click on your C drive in Windows Explorer and select 'Properties'.

Click on the Disk Cleanup button and Windows will automatically calculate how much space can be saved by removing several different types of files.

It is safe to remove most of these files, but do not select the option for Windows ESD installation files. You will need these to return your PC to its factory settings.

You can safely remove temporary internet files; .tmp files; thumbnails; windows update files and archived error reports. After you click on the option for 'Clean up system files', Windows will make additional calculations. At this point clicking on 'OK' will clean up your hard drive.

Deleting thumbs.db files

In Windows Explorer it may be common to find thumbs.db files. These are used to make it possible to view thumbnail images faster. Particularly in directories with large numbers of PDFs, you may find many of these files and not be able to delete them. This is especially a problem if you want to get rid of subfolders containing these files. Simply right clicking on the file and selecting 'Delete' while in 'Details' view may fail, and Windows will give you a message like this:

If you encounter this problem try changing the Windows explorer view from 'Details' to 'Content', you should be able to delete the thumbs.db files.

FTK Imager - Copying Protected Registry Files

There is a file in Windows 7 at C:\Users\[username] named NTUSER.DAT. This is a registry hive. A new hive is created for each user that logs in. The hives contain information about a user's application settings, network connections, printers, and environment settings. This is a very useful file to have when you're imaging a user's laptop or desktop. However registry files like this one cannot be copied with Windows Explorer. If you try, you'll get an error message like this one:

FTK Imager can be used to copy this files. On the toolbar, click on the yellow safe icon. A new dialog box will appear prompting the user to 'Obtain System Files'. If you select the option for 'Password recovery and all registry files', and select a folder to copy the files to, the NTUSER.DAT file will be copied with other registry files to the new destination.