To clear memory (RAM) and disk space on your HP Envy laptop, follow these steps using the Disk Cleanup utility:
-
Type “Disk Cleanup” in the Windows search bar (usually located at the bottom left of your screen).
-
Select the “Disk Cleanup” app from the search results.
-
A window will pop up asking you to select the drive you want to clean. Select your system drive (usually labeled C:) from the dropdown menu.
-
Click “OK” to initiate the scan. Disk Cleanup will calculate how much space you can free up on your selected drive.
-
In the Disk Cleanup window, you'll see a list of files that can be deleted. These typically include:
- Temporary files
- Recycle Bin contents
- Thumbnails
-
To perform a more thorough cleanup, click the “Clean up system files” button. This might require administrator privileges.
-
Select your system drive (usually C:) again when prompted.
-
In the new Disk Cleanup window, check the boxes next to the file types you want to remove. Consider the following options carefully:
- Temporary Windows installation files: These are files left over from a previous Windows installation.
- Windows update cleanup: This removes older versions of Windows Update files.
- System error memory dump files: These files contain information about system crashes, which can be useful for troubleshooting but often take up a lot of space.
- Delivery Optimization Files: These are files Windows uses to download updates from and share with other PCs on your network or the internet. Clearing them can free up space, but may slightly slow down future updates.
-
Click “OK”.
-
Confirm the file deletion by clicking “Delete Files”.
This process should free up disk space. However, it's important to note that this process cleans your hard drive or SSD, not your RAM (Random Access Memory). To clear RAM, you generally need to close unused programs and restart your computer.
