BleepingComputer.com: How to find out?

I bought a computer, for my daughter for school. It is a ASUS Eee. I looked at its hd and saw tons of stuff on it. I need to find out, what to keep and what to erase. Is there a program for this? Or a way to take a snap shot and post it,so some body could help me figure out what is what?
I appreciate Your Help


Thank You Davey Crockett Sr.

Are you talking about preinstalled crapware? If so, you should look at Decrapifier.


http://www.pcdecrapifier.com/

I would recommend using a space usage visualizer to see where the majority of the space is being eaten. You may find that there is a big chunk of the drive being used up by some caches or temporary files that can be cleaned out. You can also see if there is some really big game or application that is taking up too much space.

My favorite has always been Space by andyh and Space Dolphin’s Folder Size. I also like SequoiaView which is also free. There are all types of graphing types available, but I find tree-maps to be better than pies or bar graphs (or simple text). Tree-maps tend to make it super easy to find where the biggest files and directories are.

A bunch of Lifehacker members offer their recommendations on this page. WinDirStat seems to get a lot of endorsements.

HTH

Some of this stuff is needed, some junk. Problem is I don't know what is what!!!!. Like it has a camera, wi-Fi, xp, a mouse attachment that We don't have. Get the Idea??? Just want to clean it up.
I Thank You For what you have sent so far I will look at it!!!!!!!

Thanks Davey C Sr.

Synetech, on Apr 23 2009, 06:17 PM, said:

Like from me! It's an excellent program!

Also, a free scan by the Belarc Advisor can give you an idea of what programs are installed (which, if you like, you can post for opinions on what to cut out).

If you bought a brand new computer then i would suggest not to erase anything.

If you bought a second hand pc, then you may google each crap's info and decide whether your daughter may find it useful or not. Also clean it using something like CCleaner, delete all browser bookmarks etc. You never know what the old owner was storing in the bookmarks or the hard disk itself. In this case best is to format and re-install, but thats not feasible for everyone.

I don't have the restore disk. I'm going to make one or contact them for it Company. I like all of your ideas. Will try them and post what I can't figure out.
Thank You Again

Davey crockett Sr

Im not trying to infringe on his topic or anything here but im having the same problem. i want to completely wipe my computer and start over but i dont have any idea as to what is really on it.

and i dont have any of the disks to re install anything. (except xp)

can i start my own topic with this headline topic ?

thanks,
linda

Hi Linda,

You seem to be wanting to do something different than the op of this thread so I would start a new topic with a different title to avoid confusion. Also, if you are wanting to just wipe the drive and start over, does it really matter what programs are on it now? They won't be there after you wipe it clean but if it does, just try the programs suggested above.

I hate to ask before you start your own topic but I am going to as I never did see an answer from you to this question when I asked a while back and it will make a difference on how you can proceed. Is your copy of XP a full version or an upgrade version? You can answer this when you start your own thread by just elaborating when you state that you have an XP disk by stating it is an XP Upgrade disk or XP full version disk.

Also, when you do make your own thread, give a little background about the computer, like, is it that laptop that had the broken screen or your old computer from your mother-in-law that we were working on before, or a totally different one, and if you are wanting to save anything that is on this computer.

If you are just wanting to format and start over it might be better to start that thread in the XP forum to get directions on how to do that.

I’d like to add Folder Size for Windows to the list. It’s a great little tool that provides a column-handler for Explorer windows to display the size of folders and the number of contained files/folders/both in them. It’s amazing how handy such a simple tool suddenly feels. And it does not have as much of a performance impact as you would expect (I believe it can cache and updates as file operations are performed).

One caveat though, it seems that it cannot currently be disabled for common dialogs (eg File Save As dialogs, etc.) which causes Google Chrome to hang when you try to save a file in it when FSfW is installed.