Add 450 extra programs to the already extensive CCleaner. An unofficial program makes Piriform's famous system maintenance tool even more useful, by vastly increasing the amount of software it supports.

When it comes to freeing up hard drive space by removing excess crap, it's hard to top CCleaner. This application scans your computer for unnecessary files and gets rid of them. It's nothing you should run every week, but if you need to free up some space it's worth checking out.

CCEnhancer makes CCleaner even better at its job. A collection of userscripts from around the Internet, mostly the Piriform Forums, CCEnhancer can add support for 450 programs CCleaner doesn't support out of the box. You probably don't run all of these programs, but you surely run a few; that makes CCEnhancer worth checking out.

As with any free software the cleans up your system use this at your own risk. Know what you're doing before your installation and use this. If you're okay with that, though, let's take a look at CCEnhancer and what it can do.

Getting Started

The first thing you're going to want to do is download CCEnhancer. The application is portable. Run it and you'll see a pretty basic interface:

ccenhancer reviews

I'm not sure why the fonts aren't aligned in my screenshot, but looks aren't the purpose of this application anyway. Downloading and installing the extra scripts is as simple as clicking the "Download" button. Everything will be downloaded and put in place.

Wondering what applications are supported? I couldn't find a list anywhere, but if you take a look at the file CCEnhancer installs you can use CTRL and F to search for programs you care about.  What's even easier is to just install the scripts and take a look at what's new in CCleaner after you do. All of the new scripts will have a star (*) beside them, making it easy to see what CCEnhancer added. It's doubtful you'll find 450 new items of course, because only applications you have installed will show up. Still, you'll probably see more than a few new options.

CCEnhancer In Action

So what kind of additional space can this program free up for a typical user? I wanted to find out, so I decided to clean out my Windows 7 media center. To begin, I ran the typical CCleaner, without CCEnhancer's improvements.

ccenhancer free

As usual I was surprised with the results: 8GB were freed from my "C" drive. Not bad at all. I then ran CCEnhancer to see what kind of a difference the additional scripts could make. As I had already removed 8GB worth of data, I wasn't expecting much.

ccenhancer free

You didn't read that wrong: 5GB more after running CCEnhancer. Remember: that's in addition to the 8GB I've already removed. The lesson, perhaps, is that I should clean out my media center more often. But another lesson here is that CCEnhancer can make a pretty big difference. The highlights for me included the Dropbox cache, Chrome's temporary files, WinRAR, WMP art cache and VirtualClone, but there was more freed up than that.

Don't believe my experiment? Try it yourself; it's the only way to see if this will work for you.

Support For Portable CCleaner

Do you use CCleaner as a portable tool? Don't worry; these enhancements are available to you as well. You can point the tool toward your portable file:

ccenhancer reviews

This is very useful if you plan on cleaning a collection of computers using CCleaner from your thumb drive.

Conclusion

CCEnhancer is a great collection of fan-made scripts that make CCleaner even more useful. Let us know how much space it saved you in the comments below. Also feel free to recommend other programs that can clean up your Windows system, because sharing is what makes the comments so awesome. Thanks!

Image credit: carl ballou via Shuttershock