Windows: How to find and delete duplicate files easily

this video shows you how to delete duplicate files on your pc using absolutely free software so first of all all we need to do is open our browser now you can use any browser with the exception of internet explorer as internet explorer is old outdated insecure and probably won't work with this video guide i would recommend using microsoft edge google chrome firefox brave browser or opera the choice is yours but in this video i'm going to use microsoft edge simply because i think virtually everybody that's got an up-to-date pc nowadays will have microsoft edge on their system even people still running windows 7 should have microsoft edge installed so open up your browser then when your browser's open go to the address bar right at the very top of the screen not the search bar in the middle of the screen but the address bar right at the very top click in it and if there's anything in there delete it out and then you need to type ccleaner.com that's c c l e a n e r dot com all in lowercase and no spaces then press enter or return on your keyboard then you should get this or a similar screen up here so i'm going to just click ok to the cookie policy just there to get rid of that and then i just move my mouse over free download and left click once it then gives us a choice what do we want c cleaner free or c cleaner professional well c cleaner free will do the job for us so just scroll down and click on the download below ccleaner free once again it gives us the option to choose free professional or the professional bundle but i'm going to just choose free so scroll down the page and move your mouse over free download and left click once after a few seconds you should see cc setup and a series of numbers appear in the bottom left hand corner of your screen that's if you're using chrome or microsoft edge it may take a while to download and then it will scan for viruses so please be patient with it once it's finished downloading if you're using chrome or edge you can move your mouse over cc setup in the bottom left hand corner of the screen and then left click once if you're not using the chrome or edge then what you can do is you can shut your browser down by clicking on the cross in the top right hand corner of the screen and then click on any yellow folder on the screen if you don't have a yellow folder then click on the start button in the bottom left hand corner of the screen and then click on this documents icon just here then on the left hand panel here just move your mouse over any of the downloads and left click once then move your mouse over cc setup and a series of numbers and double left click now with whatever method we use to open the cc setup file we should have this screen so it says do you want to allow this app to make changes to your device well as long as it says ccleaner install there and the verified publisher is piriform software limited and the file origin is hard drive on this computer then move your mouse over yes and left click once now you'll get the ccleaner installation screen appear i would now recommend clicking on customize okay and just untick add run ccleaner option to recycle bin context menu and also add open c cleaner option to recycle bin context menu and remove the tick next to enable intelligent cookie scan so basically you're left with add desktop shortcut with a tick to the left of it and add start menu shortcuts with a tick the rest of the options should be unticked then move your mouse over install and left click once okay so now it basically gives you some other options it wants you to install c cleaner browser now we don't want to do this we don't want to install any optional software so anything from now on i'm just going to untick by unticking that box there and i'm going to click decline i'm going to decline any offers that come up okay so it's now starting to install this bit might take a bit of time there you go it now says that it's completed so i'm just going to untick this box here next to view release notes i don't really need to look at them so i've unticked that and then i left click on run ccleaner then the next thing i want to do is i want to go into options so move your mouse over options left click and then there's a few things i want to untick here as well so i want to click on smart cleaning okay and i just want to untick both of those boxes there and it comes up with warning it says this action is not recommended smart cleaning will ensure ccleaner is kept up to date and your computer as clean as possible are you sure you want to do this yes i do i don't want to see cleaner popping up telling me it's going to do certain things this is just simply for deleting duplicate files so move your mouse over yes left click once the next thing i want to do is move my mouse over updates left click once and i just want to untick both of these i don't really need to keep ccleaner up today and finally i just want to go to privacy here okay and i'm just going to untick all the boxes on this privacy page now i just move my mouse over tools left click once and just down the left hand side here you will see duplicate finder so move your mouse over that left click once okay so now it gives us the chance to search for duplicate files and it lists the drives that i've got here so i've only got a c drive here now what we want to do really is we just want to limit the results to our personal files i mean i can search the whole c drive by just clicking search but it is going to bring up some files that really i'm not going to be too sure about whether they're okay to delete or not so i'm just going to limit it to the areas where i'm likely to put my own personal files because that's what i'm looking for is my own real duplicates of my own personal files now some of these files are coming up i'm not sure what they are and they might be critical to a program or to the system so really i'd be foolish to try and delete these because i really don't know what they do so i'm just going to cancel that okay and then say yes to that so and then i'm just going to go back so click the back button up the top there okay and i'm going to untick the tick next to c colon forward slash star dot star and i'm going to click add and it says here add drive or folder so i'm going to click browse and what i want to do is i'm going to add all of the uh the personal folders so i'm going to add downloads okay so click downloads and then click ok and then click ok again i'm going to add again click browse i'm going to add desktop so i'm going to click ok click ok again going to add again so i'm going to click add click browse and then it's documents is the next one i'm going to add click ok click ok again then i'm going to add click browse and then i'm going to go to music click ok click ok again and i'm going to click add again click browse click videos click ok click ok again and then i'm going to click add again click browse and i'm going to click pictures then click ok and click ok again now i think i've got all of the personal areas that i'm likely to put files in myself so the next thing i need to do is to click on search so move your mouse over search left click once and there we go it says file search has completed so as far as i can tell i don't have any duplicate files on the system but say if i did have duplicate files on the system i've just planted one um just as an example so i've put a copy of a picture in the downloads folder i've also got a copy in the pictures folder so let's just click on search now and there we go so it says file search has completed and it's brought up the duplicates here so i've as you can see here under path i've got one in downloads and one in pictures i'm just going to move that out a little bit there and i'm just going to move the name column over a little bit so i can just double check and as you can see the creation date was exactly the same and the size is exactly the same and the file name is exactly the same as well so i can choose which one i want to delete so i don't need to keep the one in the downloads folder there so i just tick the one in the downloads folder okay and then click delete selected and it says there gives you a warning so this will permanently delete selected files from your system are you sure you want to do this so think about this double check it if you want to before you do this because you may not be able to get this file back once you've clicked okay so okay i'm quite happy with that so i'm going to click ok and they go so it says the selected files have have been successfully deleted so i just click on ok there and there we go if you feel that this system isn't finding all the duplicate files then you can refine it a little bit so for instance it's ignoring files under one megabyte so if i just untick that okay and it's also matching files by name now it might well be that if we've duplicated some files then they might not have the same name sometimes when you copy and paste a file in the same directory or same folder you might get number one after it so i'm just gonna untick name okay but i'm gonna leave size modified date and content all ticked and i'm gonna like say untick file size under one megabyte and i'm going to click search again and let's just see what it brings up okay so it says file search is completed so i click on ok and as you can see here it's actually brought out some more results for us so it's found a couple of files there called untitled envelope which because they're under one megabyte it's picked them up now but also it's picked up these pictures here um and it's found that they're the same but they do have different names this one's got a one after it and that one hasn't so that's a way of like say refining it and again what i want to do is i want to delete the ones out the downloads folder i'll leave the ones in the pictures and the documents folder so i just click on the ones which are in the downloads folder so that's those two there as you can oh sorry wrong one that one there that one there as you can see by looking at the path it says it's in the downloads folder so i've ticked those two i click on delete selected make sure that you're 100 sure that you do want to delete these because you might not be able to get them back after clicking ok once you're sure click on ok and there you go the selected files have been successfully deleted so click on ok so there you go that's a great little way of clearing duplicate files so i'm just going to close down the ccleaner now and while we're on the subject we've downloaded obviously ccleaner the installation file we've got it on our computer we don't really need to keep that file on the computer so all we do is we just click on any yellow folder if you haven't got a yellow folder click on the start button and then click on documents just there and then we click on downloads any of the downloads in the left hand column there and then we find the file that says cc setup and then a series of numbers left click once and then move your mouse over delete left click once and then move your mouse over yes left click once and then click on the cross in the top right hand corner there and for good measure as well we can also empty the recycle bin so move your mouse over the recycle bin right click on it then move your mouse over empty recycle bin and then left or right click on empty recycle bin and then left click yes here and there you go it's now deleting all of the uh recycle bin files to free up a little bit more space so there you go that's a great little guide which tells you how to use the free ccleaner to find and delete duplicate files on your pc hope this guide helps and thank you very much for watching you can follow me on twitter at cwtech that's at cwtech on twitter and don't forget to check out my other videos in my youtube channel just google chrisweight youtube and don't forget to like and subscribe to my youtube channel thank you for your support

Channel: Chris Waite

Views: 16,759

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Id: TXHgcxDEIxk

Length: 13min 51sec (831 seconds)

Published: Thu May 13 2021