We got a computer that work is getting rid of. Since we're down to one shared laptop, I was pretty excited.
Except holy cow, this thing is SO.SLOW. I knew it would be bad. I figured we'd clean it up (everything is still on it from 1000's of campers using it) and it would be fine. Except I can't even clean it up without it completely freezing to the point that I have to unplug it. Apparently no one thought to run maintenance on these after I stopped working in the office there.
It has XP on it. It's that old. I'm deleting programs under 10MB and working my way up, because it freezes on anything larger. We haven't been able to remove one of the other accounts yet, which has a ton of documents on it.
I feel for you, cleaning out tons of "garbage" (for lack of a better word) on old computers can take FOR-EV-ER (I used to do it as a side job... long ago).
You have my sympathies... and my permission to have a glass of wine (or a beer or a shot) after each successful deletion!
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"Yabba Dabba Doo" - Frederick J. Flintstone... So what?
(Judd Nelson as Atty. Robin 'Stormy' Weathers in "From the Hip")
I don't suppose they have the installation disks? If not, can you make recovery disks? It sounds like it would be faster to reload the thing than keep taking the files off bit by bit.
Using the "Recovery" disks is a good idea (if they are available), but I would only suggest it as a LAST resort. I've done a few that way and in some cases there were issues with bad drivers or drivers that couldn't be loaded/found and some parts of the computers never worked (or worked right) again.
__________________
"Yabba Dabba Doo" - Frederick J. Flintstone... So what?
(Judd Nelson as Atty. Robin 'Stormy' Weathers in "From the Hip")