I've removed my photos and music to an External Hard-disc and it's still slow. Think I've heard of some sort of cleanup programmes that can have my laptop running as fast as ever – anyone any ideas?

winaso Registry Optimiser

Best way really is to reinstall windows.

Ccleaner. http://www.ccleaner.com/

No need to do a reinstall

IME free cleaners do nothing towards speeding the machine up. They may remove temporary files and old items in the registry but nothing speeds a machine up like a clean install.

ok how does a numpty like me perform a clean install?

Ccleaner keeps my ancient machine running well – along with sorting out what runs at startup using mike linns utility

I really wouldn't do a clean install until every other option is exhausted.

More detail needed. How much RAM, and type? What speed CPU? Hard drive capacity/ freespace? Security packages installed? Operating system?

Registry cleaners cause more probs than they solve!

another vote for CCleaner.

Ccleaner

IOBit smart defrag is worth having installed once clean too.

CCleaner has a registry cleaning as well as disk cleaning

ccleaner or jv16powertools

back up and set a save point before you do any reg/file optimizing.

i also use auslogics disk defragger. it's free, fast and decent at doing what its meant to do.

wipe windows and install Linux 😉

oodles quicker, better battery life on laptops, comes with all the programs most people need on it already (office, messenger, internet, email, a photoshop clone, etc)
and its free, and all the programs are free!
and you never need to defrag it

reccomended (unless you play games and neeed windows)

you just need to download the cd image, burn it onto a cd, and run it as a normal installation disk

http://www.ubuntu.com/

if you want to try it out without ballsing up windows, this program installs it inside windows as a program, so it can be uninstalled as easily as a program, but when you boot the computer, you can choose which OS to run. it doesnt run inside windows, it runs next to it, so even using wubi, you arnt restricted by windows being slow.
wubi is FULL ubuntu, it just means your hard drive still has windows on it, taking up space

http://wubi-installer.org/

ccleaner again. Its better for keeping a freshly installed system running smoother rather than revitalising an old one, but it will be worth having regardless.

Why reinstall… Just make a mirror of your fresh install with all the updates and addons and when you need to clean up just use the mirror.

wipe windows and install Linux

Begone Linux geek. By the power of Torvalds, I cat you to /dev/null.

Olly, what have you done? I've just installed ubuntu with that little link you posted.

Oops sorry wrong thread, thought this was TJ on a mission ……

http://www.iobit.com/advancedwindowscareper.html