Check to see what's taking up your harddrive space

So you peruse through your computer one day and you notice that for some odd reason you hard drive space has shrunk tremendously. What could possibly be causing this shortage of precious space? There are quite a number of things that could actually be causing this, of course if you have alot of programs, videos and picture on your computer then your question to this problem is already answered. However, for most of us the answer to this question is not so easy to come by. Spyware often is the cause of this as it silently sneaks on to your computer and installs unwanted software. Even the most sophisticated anti spyware software sometimes lets spyware through.

If you want to get an idea of what is actually taking up your hard drive space I would recommend a little piece of software called Windir Stat. It scans your computer files and displays them as blocks, the larger the block the larger the file and as you guessed it the more hard drive space it takes up. It will even tell you the location of the file. In many cases, the file can be deleted, saving you some much needed hard drive space. I freed up 2 gigs of space. You can also check the location of any spyware that might have been installed.

All in all I think this is a must have for anyone, its a great analysis tool that lets you see the big picture on your hard drive, it also helps that it is free too!

Turning off Windows Aero to Improve Performance

Windows Vista boasts an impressive graphical display. Of course one can only truly enjoy this experience if they have a decent graphics card. Even having a decent graphics card may not ensure that you get to see this impressive graphical display as many cards are not compatible with Vista.

I am fortunate enough to be able to be able to run Vista on my computer and see the advanced graphics. Vista has a new graphics engine called Aero, if you are running Vista you will notice that now when you switch or close windows they fade, or there is a glassy appearance to them. It's nice to know that you can disable Aero to improve the performance of your computer. By disabling Aero you can significantly improve your computer's performance.

To do this go to Start---->Control Panel---->Personalization----->Window Colour and Appearance---->Open Classic Appearance Properties for more colour options. This ill bring up your appearance settings window. In the colour scheme section you ca completely disable Aero by selecting another colour scheme ( usually selecting Windows Vista basic works well). Once you have done this all those fancy effects will disappear but your computer performance should improve significantly.