Keeping the clutter out

Just wondering if you guys use software like ccleaner to keep your computer clean as in your hdd. Software to defrag files and what not. I've been using Advanced System Care 6 but just didn't know if you guys knew of any other good ones. Also I wanted to ask if these programs really help keep your computer running at top speeds or if its just a gimmick. Thanks any responses related are much appreciated

This question gets asked quite a bit (search CCleaner here to see). I do not touch any applications like that personally and most enthusiasts will not either. At times, they can do more harm than good, but the latest programs do not seem to bork your system. Im going to say its up to you, but, I personally wouldnt bother.

^+1+1+1+1+1

only thing i use on cc cleaner is the uninstaller on windows xp machines, i always hated windows xp's uninstaller. i also use it to clean up un needed crap on customers pc's so i can say i did alot more than just ran a virus scan and deleted 5,000,001 trojans.

Sometimes I use it to empty recycle bins (each drive in Windows has its own, and I've got 3 drives).

EarthDog said:

At times, they can do more harm than good, but the latest programs do not seem to bork your system.

Click to expand...

Say whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat?

Re: More harm than good
I've repaired hundreds of PC's with CCleaner in the mix and never had an issue... not saying it's not possible, but the z-score on that is frackin low.

Re: Latest Programs
Both true and false. The crap ones just found new places to hide their garbage. (e.g. ProgramData)

The reg cleaner in CCleaner is pretty epic, if you know in what order to accomplish things. The Revo uninstaller from puriform is much better, also, than the uninstaller in CCleaner.

If 'cleaners' are not snake oil then what do they remove from registry that measurably improves performance? What were the symptoms of broken PCs, what did they do/not do after being repaired by programs which removed registry entries?

CCleaner has a nice /AUTO switch to clean your web browsing history/cache/recycle bin, but allowing anything to blindly remove registry entries it sees fit is risky business.


Original poster, you probably noticed how your Windows runs smooth and fast after initial install? Partition your hard drive and install Windows onto a relatively small partition. Perhaps install different versions of Windows on different partitions. Perhaps install large programs/games on their own partitions. As long as you don't keep personal data on the OS partitions, you can image/reimage one OS from the other in a few minutes and have things running exactly as they did at the time you made the image.

You can defrag your mechanical hard drive once in a while, but SSDs are so inexpensive now that it makes a lot of sense to install Windows on a SSD drive which does not need to be defragmented ever and gives you a real increase in performance you can feel.

yea 90% of the time my customer's computers its adaware like "pc performance enhancer" and a bunch of crap like that, that's what is slowing their pc's down. soon as i hit the uninstall on them its instantly faster. either that or driver problems.i go ahead and do the ccleaner just for giggles, or to use the uninstall on it.

c627627 that is great advice i have followed it now and i have a main drive and a second for storage that everything important gets installed on any problems i load clonezilla through my pxe server and reimage the main drive from an image i made after i had everything the way i liked it. it has been a godsend.
my main pc has a 60gb SSD i have a couple games installed on but everything else is on my wd black windows is much snappier, and you can hardly tell the difference with an SSD with games minus ones that dont wait for everyone to load like cod4, ever little bit of a headstart counts.

Depends on the computer, if its old and pretty slow and you are giving it a tidy up, CCleaner can have its benefits. If its a decent spec machine that's got a month old Windows install there won't be any effect on performance - or anything else for that matter.

c627627 said:

If 'cleaners' are not snake oil then what do they remove from registry that measurably improves performance? What were the symptoms of broken PCs, what did they do/not do after being repaired by programs which removed registry entries?

Click to expand...

The Windows registry can be easily compared to a filing cabinet. This filing cabinet contains all the directions on how to accomplish each task, each file association, every setting, etc.

If the filing cabinet is full of clutter, you can imagine that finding the appropriate command takes just a tad bit more time.

Now I'm not saying that CCleaner is going to speed up your machine every single time you clean out the registry, not at all.

The value from the registry cleaner comes in when there is massive amounts of malware installed and then removed. Removing the physical files and then running the registry cleaner will speed Windows up because this crap software dumps all kinds of registry entries in Windows processes to point to their files. So Windows will waste time looking for crap that doesn't exist.

I've seen PC's that had 1000+ invalid entries. Imagine the Windows kernel evaluating even 10% of those when trying to make legitimate calls.

So I think we're both right here. CCleaners registry cleaner doesn't add a lot of value on a well maintained system, but on a system that has been neglected for quite a while will see a performance boost following a good cleaning.