We have a 4 year old laptop that over the years has been filled with software, files, music, videos and the typical guff you get over time. It’s showing its age a bit but still perfectly functional. I’d like to freshen it up a bit though but don’t know where to start.

Disk cleanup cleared 10GB (!!!) But I still feel I could get rid of loads of unnecessary crap in there.

Music and vids have all gone to NAS storage. What next?

Documents off, make a list of important applications, backup any application profiles or playlists you care about. Reinstall windows, or put 8.1 on which will run faster on old PC. If you go for 8.1 install Classic Shell to reinstate start menu. Also an SSD works wonders.

Just done similar and most of my time was spent in removing unused programs, deleting norton and installing MSE, and stopping services/programs at startup using msconfig.

Worth checking if your laptop could take any more ram: was sorting out my dad’s laptop as well and we added 1gb of ram for £22

Got a recovery disc or partition? Backup your your data, re-install.

Otherwise
Add/Remove program, just uninstall everything you don’t use, hey at worst you just re-install the few bits you did 😉
No idea what Disc cleanup util your using but uninstall it and just use the “oldtimers TFC” (temp file cleaner), the most basic and unintrusive util I’ve seen to do this (used to recommend CCleaner, TFC is so much cleaner..) that works really well
Personnally I like to run a complete disc scan & a defrag but never seen a defragged machine run quicker..

Nukes suggestion about MSConfig is good but unless your quite computer literate, it maybe daunting. Again think about replacing your hdd with an SSD disc. Clone it from the old hdd, if you’ve no recovery/installation media

PS: You do have at least 4Gb of ram?

C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\Temp

For all usernames. Empty them thar folders.

Malware Bytes, PC Decrapifer C-Cleaner might be the fast / easiest way.

all of the above are good options – but BEFORE YOU DO ANYTHING, MAKE BACK UPS !!

do a registry dump before you run CCCleaner or similar

(used to recommend CCleaner, TFC is so much cleaner..)

This, a million times this. TFC is a terrific bit of kit.

CCleaner is a good tool but can be dangerous in over-zealous hands and I really wish people would stop recommending it as a generic day-to-day maintenance tool. As a rule of thumb “registry cleaners” are to be avoided; your registry isn’t dirty, leave it alone.