Cleaning up a laptop.

[Khamsin]

I'm giving my old laptop to my brother, but before I do, I just want to clean off all the unneccesary stuff that may bog the computer down and give him something as fresh and clean as possible. However, I don't have the restore CD or original OS CD for my old laptop.

What's the best I can do, besides just uninstalling software and disabling some services?

[Fhqwghads]

Well, like you said you can uninstall stuff that you use, and know he won't. After that, run cleanmgr.exe to wipe the machine of temp files and empty the recycle bin, then defrag the drive. That's probably about all you can do to make the laptop as pristine as possible without a format and reinstall.

[Khamsin]

Think there'll be any unwanted services or other things starting up that aren't needed that'll just slow things down (and aren't removed with add/remove programs)? Beyond the adware type cleanup.

[Fhqwghads]

Probably not, as long as you uninstall apps that only you use. Typically services are installed along with an app, and removed once the app is uninstalled.

[Cephius]

Go through add/remove programs and clear everything out that doesn't belong, and go through the startup items in msconfig or the registry to make sure nothing you don't need is starting in the background. A great clean-up program is ccleaner which you should certainly run to clean up temp internet files, unused registry entries, ect. This will just make sure that the machine is as "clean" as possible.

[viperlasson]

If you are worried about startup processes go to Start > run > msconfig

Go to the Startup tab and uncheck the programs which you think are unnecessary.

[Khamsin]

Well, I've uninstalled everything I don't think he'll use, and pretty much just left Office and Photoshop.

I updated to XP SP3.

I defragged the hard drive after freeing up like half the space on it.

I unchecked Index Servicing on the C drive.

I turned off unnecessary autoloading system tray things.

I cleared all the temp files.

Is there anything left that I can do it put it as close to as "fresh" a state as possible, without reformatting (don't have OEM windows CD, but its legit)? Anything further to increase performance and speed, now that I uninstalled a bunch of crap (except Borland CBuilder6 which I couldn't uninstall because it couldn't find the original install info)?

[Cephius]

You can delete your old user profiles and their associated settings (eveything behind C:\Documents and Settings\username) but that should be pretty much it.

[Khamsin]

You can delete your old user profiles and their associated settings (eveything behind C:\Documents and Settings\username) but that should be pretty much it.

Speaking of which, so things don't say my name everywhere (e.g. Office documents, or whatnot), can I simply make another windows user in his name, give it admin rights, and delete my user profile, and everything will work just fine?

[Cephius]

Yup, create his account and then run all the applications from his account to make sure they all work. If something doesn't just uninstall it and reinstall it under his username.

[Khamsin]

Thanks, I'll try that.

I just wish I could get rid of Borland CBuilder6, since it has some extra services and crap it installs that won't be needed anymore. Only I don't know which ones are necessary or not.