Ascertain the cause of nondeletable files and remove them(Windows XP, Vista, 7)

            When cleaning the hard disk, you bump into files and folders that cannot be deleted. You want to know what is blocking access so you can release the files for deletion.

            Mostly, access by another program is the cause for causing a file to become non-deletable. Windows unfortunately does not provide any information about it. The limit is when you get the message ‘The file is being used by another person or program’. That’s as useless as the message ‘Close all programs that are using this file, and repeat the process’. The free tool UnlockIT (emcosoftware. com/unlock-it) determines the corresponding program and enables deleting the specific file.
             After the quick installation, start the tool. Click the selection arrow under the ‘Browse’ icon and decide whether you want to look into a ‘File’ or a ‘Folder’. Then navigate to the desired entry and confirm the selection with ‘Open’ or ‘OK’. The tool will now show you whether a block exists, and lists the programs that cause it. Check the details so that you do not delete important files. For instance, an open Office document causes even the relevant folder to be blocked. If you want to remove a block, right click the program in the list and try to remove the existing blocks via ‘Close Handles’. This is safe to a large extent as no processes are ended. Only when this doesn’t work should you end the application, which you can do via the ‘Kill Processes’ command in the next step. The element can then be deleted.

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Accelerate the system during the defragmentation process(Windows XP, Vista, 7)

              As soon as a defragmentation starts, your system becomes very slow and hardly becomes available for normal use. You want to work faster again.

              During defragmentation, a security program might also be active, for instance a virus scanner. Both processes hinder each other as the security program detects every change made in a file because of the defragmentation and then reanalyzes it. Normally, this is a good precaution, but it costs a lot of computing power and you can be reasonably sure no malware is at work.
              To ensure a safe work environment, first disconnect the PC from its network and Internet connections. For that, you can use the Wi-Fi switch on a laptop or unplug the network cable. You can also deactivate the relevant connection for the time being. As the next step, end the security monitoring by right clicking the applicable program’s icon in the taskbar and select the its stop/pause command. Specify the desired time period, then complete the defragmentation without interruption. You can continue to work in the mean time with Office programs or play local media files. Finally, do not forget to reactivate the security program or to restart the computer.

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Move user profiles to another disk for security(Windows Vista, 7)

             For proper segregation of system and data, you want to move a user profile from the boot drive to another hard disk. Windows however does not think this should be easy.
             It is usually not possible to move user profiles under Windows. You thus have to use a trick to move the profile data to another location of your choice and let Windows continue to believe that everything still is where it should be.

              For this, set up a junction (connection). The prerequisite for this is that you are using the NTFS file system. Since the following steps are not reliable with Windows already running, start the system with the installation DVD and follow the steps up to the language selection. Use the key combination [Shift]+[F10] to open a command line window. Check the individual drive alphabets with ‘dir’ because they might become different from the normal assignments in Windows. Then copy the existing profile data to the new location via ‘robocopy’. The options you will need might include ‘/mir’ for a complete transfer of the directory structure, ‘/ sec’ for copying the security information and then ‘/xj’ for excluding the existing junctions. Since it is not very practical to move one single user profile and to leave the rest of them on the system disk, use the action for the entire folder ‘c:\users’. The command should then be robocopy c:\users d:\Newusers /mir /sec / xj if you want to save the profiles under ‘d:\Newusers’ for instance.
              Here, you must delete the original folders completely with the command rd c:\users /s /q. Then create the required junction in the file system with mklink c:\users d:\Benutzer /j. Then close the command window and cancel the Windows setup. Windows can now start normally and uses the profiles from the new location.
Note: The new path must be available at all times. If you need to restore the system for instance, the action cannot be undone. In order to bring the user profile back to the original location, you need to undo the specified steps in the same manner. For this, first delete the junction using the command rd c:\ users. The real data at ‘d:\Newusers’ is retained and can be copied to ‘c:\users’ on the system drive.

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