4. Delete temporary files. This can be done opening My Computer, right clicking your hard disk drive selecting Properties, then clicking on Disk Cleanup box (see Figure 2). Repeat this step for all hard disk drives and/or partitions your PC may have.

click to enlarge
Figure 2: Deleting temporary files.

Next go to C:\Documents and Settings\[your_user_name]\Local settings\Temp and delete everything you find there (believe, you will find a lot of junk there), see Figure 3 (you will only be able to see this folder if you enabled "Show hidden files and folders" option; we will show you how to do this below). Just hit Control A and then the Del key. While doing this one or another file will complain that it cannot be deleted because it is being used by another program (see Figure 4) and Windows will stop the entire deletion that you were performing. Just select manually all files again but this file and hit Del again. Keep going until you have deleted all files that you were able to. Repeat this process for all users available on your system.

click to enlarge
Figure 3: Deleting temporary files.

Figure 4: One temporary file complaining that it cannot be deleted. Just ignore it and go ahead.

As we mentioned, you will only be able to access this folder if you enabled "Show hidden files and folders" option. This option is found under My Computer, Tools, Folder Options, View. On the Window that will show up, you need to configure the available options like the following:

• Enable "Show hidden files and folders"
• Uncheck "Hide extensions for known file types"
• Uncheck "Hide protected operating system files (Recommended)"

After performing this configuration, it should look like the screen shown in Figure 5.

click to enlarge
Figure 5: Configuring Windows.

Even though the last two options are not really necessary, we recommend that you configure them the way we are telling you, since the default Windows configuration prevents you from seeing virus-related files when your computer is infected.