Sometimes computers just get cluttered with useless junk and too often people do nothing about it. The computer just gets slower and slower as temperate files fill up in folders. The registry full of old data from programs you might have uninstalled, and programs you almost newer use that start up with your computer.
Today i will review CCleaner from Periform.
http://www.ccleaner.com
Many users do not know how to deal with things like this and either live with it or turn to friends which might or might not know more about computers. Often the solution is a complete reinstall of the entire OS! 9 out 10 times such drastic steps is not needed. What computer users need to learn is too clean out their computer and everything will run better and more smoothly for much longer. Luckily there are several programs that will help us do this and one of them is CCleaner.
CCleaner is a free program that will help you clean out your computer of temporary files and remove old entires from your registry(this is where windows will store info about a program and file associations among other things) and enable you a easy way to disable programs from running when you start windows. All of this is something that most users don’t know how to deal with but this program will do it all for you. In a safe way. Lets take a look at how this works.
Cleaner
The First thing you will want to use is the Cleaner. This is the main function of this program and will remove all the old files from your computer. Don’t worry. All it will remove is temporary files that you do not use. This is files created by your browser like Internet Explorer or Firefox, your anti virus program when updating, or temporary files from your paint program. This is files that is useful while using a program to make a program go faster or store temporary information about a file. But too often the programs do not remove this information itself when you close your program and now just take up space on your computer and if there is really many old files in your temp folders it will also make your computer slower then it should be. In the screenshot below I have just used the Analyze button and the program have checked for old files on my computer. If a program that it checks is in use the program will ask you too close that program so it can clean it. You can just skip that program if you wish or close it so ccleaner also can remove old files from that program. In my case here the program when it have checked the computer gave me this information:
ANALYSIS COMPLETE - (50.603 secs)
——————————————————————————————
777,9MB to be removed. (Approximate size)
——————————————————————————————
Details of files to be deleted (Note: No files have been deleted yet)
——————————————————————————————
In my case here the program found 777 MB of old files on my computer! that’s alot of space used on your harddisk for files you don’t really need. So I press will choose to use the button on the lower right side called “Run Cleaner” The program will now ask for confirmation if I want to remove the files permanently from my computer. I want to do this and press yes and CCleaner gives me a overview of what was removed.
You can choose which programs and files the program should clean yourself. Most of the time you can just let the program run from what it is set to. But if you wish you can go over the settings yourself. Maybe there is a program that you don’t wish the program touch.
Registry
The registry is a place where windows stores all kind of information. But all to often this data is from programs no longer on your computer or broken links that don’t work anymore. This is a major source of slow don’t on many computers. And many users don’t know about it. The more advanced users truly hate the registry and many thinks its a outdated concept. But as it stands this is still in all versions of windows we use today.
The screen we see when we press the “registry” button looks alot like what we saw in the cleaner screen. Now we just have “scan for issues” and “fix issues” We first press scan for issues and the computer will be searched for problems in the registry When its done it will show a list of problems that might be on your computer. This is often problems with files that are linked to that no longer are in your computer and missing keys that no longer are in use. In a perfect world all of this would not be a problem as your programs should remove all info no longer needed them self when you uninstall. But much to often this is not the case and thats why its good to have a program like this to help you out. When you press the “fix selected issues” button the program will ask you if you wish to take a backup of the registry before you clean. I don’t do this very often because I have not yet had a problem with anything the program remove. But if you are first time user I recommend that you do this, so any program that may arise can be undone again. Next up the program will ask you about each problem and if you want to fix them or you can just choose fix all issues now. When this is done you will be back and the registry screen. I have found that running this a couple of times in a row will sometimes reveal more problems then what was found first time. So I suggest you do that as well.
Now that you are done with the cleaner and registry parts you might already feel that your computer runs a little faster. This is because obsolete information has been removed from your computer and no longer uses resources that should be used for the things you really need.
Tools
Next up is Tools. This is where you can uninstall programs and remove programs from starting up when your computer starts. For the uninstall I recommend that you just continue to use the uninstaller under your control panel in windows. This is not something you need to do from inside this program and better left to windows itself. But feature fro Startup programs can be really useful and if you newer cleaned up what starts up with your computer this can really speed up your computer alot. But it can also be a confusing thing to look at. What you can remove and what should stay. If you have no idea what to here and have a friend that are good with computers I suggest that you let him or her help you with this. But I also want to say that you should not be afraid to try it out on your own. You can choose disable by right clicking on a item and it will not be deleted from your computer. It will just not run when you start your computer and can always be enabled again from ccleaner if you notice that you needed that startup item. But use common sense. Look over the list. Is there things like adobe speed launcher or lightscribe control panel? This is items that you properly don’t need daily and safely can be disabled. Look over the list and disable what you don’t use. When you are done. Restart your computer. If you removed alot of items from startup windows will now start up alot faster since it don’t have to start lots of small programs.
The Rest
I hope this has given you a overview of what CCleaner is and can do. Its a really good program and best of all its free. Its one of the first programs I install when I come to a new computer because it helps me remove things I don’t need and really speeds up the computer by removing old information. Its easy to use and its translated to many languages , so its easy to use for pretty much everyone. Don’t be afraid to try it.
My rating of this program: 5 out 5 stars
Do you have more then one computer? A desktop computer and a laptop maybe? Have you ever wanted to share files between computers without having to copy them over yourself. Or just have your files up to date no matter which computer you are at? Then you should check out dropbox.
