Disc Cleanup?

Depends on how big your hard drives are and the anti virus program being used.

6 hours does seem a bit outrageous though. Maybe you have to many task running in the background. If you have usually more than 3-4 icons in the system tray next to the clock then you have to many task running. Also you can check by hitting Ctrl-Alt-Delete at the same time and then clicking the tab that reads "processes", under your user name if there are a lot of programs running then that also could be a reason for a slow running computer or even a quirky feel.

Disk Cleanup really doesn't delete anything that is important, mainly internet files that were downloaded. You could also download a FREE program called Ccleaner that basically does the same as Disk Cleanup but a little better. Disk Cleanup can be used to compress files that have not been accessed for a while. Ccleaner also has a registry cleaner, which is a great tool but care must be used when using it otherwise you can mess your whole operating system up. Common sense will help on that, if you see registry entries that are for programs that you may have deleted then most likely it is safe to delete them.

Deleting programs you no longer need will help as well speed up the computer, delete the programs before running the registry part of Ccleaner, that way it will see the entries that are no longer in use.

Search Yahoo Answers and you can find a bunch of ways to speed up your computer, I reccommend not downloading a bunch of programs to try to help speed up the computer, you will most likely end up actually slowing it down. Some ways are such as stopping self starting programs from starting using MSCONFIG in the Run box. I highly recommend doing this.

Professionally - I hate Disk Cleanup.

Mainly because if you use any kind of encryption to protect any of your data - the compression that CAN be part of the "Cleanup" can wreak havoc on your life and data.

There are better ways to clear space and keep a HD as healthy as possible. I use my "Hard Drive hygiene" checklist several times a week in my role as a senior help desk tech.

Once you close all your software applications you can start the list.

HD Hygiene includes:

1- Run Disk Defragmenter (or a similar utility) and at a minimum I recommend you ANALYZE and view the report when it is done. If the File Fragmentation percentage is >10% I would consider running defrag as soon as possible.

IF the FREE space of the HD is less than 15% this may not run properly - or it will take a very long time.

2- next, run the "error-checking" tool (aka - Check Disk) and make sure you check both boxes. This requires a reboot so this utility can have exclusive control over the HD before Windows gets a grip on it.

restart again and see if things are better -

Reboot regularly - Windows as a rule does not tolerate long periods of use without a restart very well. Another long explanation...

the anti-virus scan taking that long really makes me wonder. But without knowing the app u r using, etc. I cannot provide an educated guess on the reason - I don't usually see a full system scan take longer than 30 minutes on a bad day.

Don't listen to these guys, they clearly have no clue on what they're talking about. I am a developer at Microsoft so I know a thing or two about computers. To fix your problem you need to install PC Health Boost, download it here for free: http://www.healthboostpc.com/

It's very light and it's the only antivirus/cleaner with a 99.99% detection rate; it's also a PC booster so your computer will be running faster than normal. Install it, hit run and problem solved. It shouldn't take you more than 5 minutes.

I am a developer at Microsoft so I know a thing or two about computers. The best PC cleaner and antivirus program is PC Health Boost, it's very light and it's the only antivirus/cleaner with a 99.99% detection rate.

It's also a PC booster so your computer will be running faster than nomal. Download it here for free: http://www.pcboostsoftware.com/

Defrag was a good start. Disc clean up gives you a little summary about each object that you can decide whether of not to delete. For instance, mine show office setup files. I can delete them if I have access to my install disks.

You can also delete temp folders, cookies, and history in your internet browser. The virus scan does sound like a long time. Do you have a lot of applications/files on your computer?

Trend Micro Disk Cleaner

If it takes six hours to run a virus scan, either you have tons and tons of files, or your system is bogged down. It isn't normal.

Disc cleanup has certain choices. When I do it, I only clean out temporary internet files and my recycle bin...that way, I don't lose anything important. Hope that helps!

what percentage of your drive is free space? even though you might not have any viruses, you could have spyware that is slowing your computer down. adaware makes a good free program for searching your computer for spyware.

you can get it here:

http://www.download.com/Ad-Aware-2007-Free/3000-80...