Of all the tools out there, CCleaner is probably the top solution that everyone recommends. Heck, we mention CCleaner numerous times here at MakeUseOf (such as here
Top 5 Freeware Registry Cleaners That Improve PC Performance
Top 5 Freeware Registry Cleaners That Improve PC Performance
Cleaning the registry will rarely improve Windows performance and it's risky. Yet many swear by registry cleaners. You too? At least use one of these tools because they're the safest you will find.
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or here
5 Tools To Permanently Delete Sensitive Data From Your Hard Drive [Windows]
5 Tools To Permanently Delete Sensitive Data From Your Hard Drive [Windows]
In a recent article I explained why it is impossible to recover data from a hard drive after overwriting it. In that post I mentioned that simply deleting files or formatting your hard drive typically...
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or even here
Help CCleaner Remove All Your Excess Files With CCEnhancer
Help CCleaner Remove All Your Excess Files With CCEnhancer
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. CCEnhancer makes CCleaner even better...
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), but it has indeed been quite a while since we’ve last written about CCleaner in an article dedicated to nothing but it.
Over the last two years, CCleaner has changed quite a bit in terms of version numbers…up now to version 3.10 at the time of this writing. While visually the program actually hasn’t changed much (it’s good, why break something that’s not broken?), a lot of additional features have been included behind-the-scenes to make it more functional than ever.
About CCleaner and Installation
CCleaner is the most updated program out of all the Piriform offerings (CCleaner, Defraggler Defraggler: Better Defragmentation Software For Windows Defraggler: Better Defragmentation Software For Windows Alternative defragmentation tools have been mentioned for years and years now, as most people deem the default defragmenter that comes with Windows to be insufficient. There are plenty of different solutions that try to out-do... Read More , and Recuva Restore Deleted Files Easily With Recuva Restore Deleted Files Easily With Recuva Read More ), and will ask you to update practically once every week or two. In case you haven’t installed CCleaner yet or want to check for updates without opening the program, you can head over to this page, download the setup file, and run it. During installation, I recommend that you actually look through the settings, as there may be a few preferences you may not want, such as menu options for the Recycle Bin.
Clean Out Temporary Files
CCleaner lives up to its name in a number of different ways. First, you can go through the usual temporary files of any supported applications. This includes the usual list of browsers, system, and some other lesser known options such as Java. With more and more updates, the amount of supported applications increases by a lot.
Clean Out Your Bloated Registry
The second way CCleaner lives up to its name is by its registry cleaning capabilities. CCleaner can look for a number of different registry keys that are irrelevant or unusable to the system which just clutter up the registry as a whole. As far as my experience has gone, CCleaner has been the only tool that doesn’t screw up your programs after sweeping through the registry. Updates ensure that the algorithms to find these unwanted registry keys are accurate and do not disturb anything on the system.
Even More System Maintenance Options
CCleaner continues on to include some other interesting options. In order to not have to switch between multiple applications, CCleaner also includes areas where you can remove installed programs.
You can also control the list of startup applications to lessen the strain on resources and increase boot/login time.
Deleting any old system restore points (except for the newest one to ensure you still have a point to go back to in case your system immediately breaks afterwards) helps a lot too.
Finally, you can wipe a drive’s free space (or even the whole thing) completely. For the wipe procedure, you’re offered multiple options for wiping, such as 1 pass, 3 passes, 7 passes, or an incredible (and time consuming) 35 passes.
Options
Finally, CCleaner does offer a decent amount of options to customize a few aspects of how the system maintenance tool operates. There are also specific things you can include or exclude, such as cookies and other directories.
Conclusion
CCleaner could possibly be named one of the 7 wonders of computer maintenance (don’t ask me what the other 6 are, it was just a play on words). It has been extremely easy to use, and it works. Every time. Simply on occasional runs, it often cleans out over half a gigabyte of data. While your results may not be that large, as I am a fairly heavy user, your computer will thank you for using CCleaner. So if you’re one of the very few that haven’t used it yet, I highly recommend you try it out! Don’t rely on just the Windows Disk Cleaner!
Even though CCleaner can do everything except make you sandwiches, what would you like to see added to it? Let us know in the comments! Maybe with the regular updates some will be included!
I always use the registry clean up option, and never look back. I glance over the obsolete registry keys that it finds, of course, but there's never been a key reccommended for deletion that I would find suspicious of possibly breaking an application or even Windows. I always take the "fix all current issues", without even backing up and never had a problem. Maybe once I did choose to back up just in case but it proved to be unneccessary.
Of course, I don't reccommend everyone to do the same thing. I am savvy enough to be able to recognize the potential importance of the registry keys when I see them, and CCleaner usually reccommends deletion of keys containing obsolete paths to recent files or obsolete filetype associations. For users that do not know anything about Registry, I would reccommend to do the backup before cleanup, just in case, so they can restore the deleted keys if something gets broken.
CCleaner is indeed one of the best tools out there for it's puposes, however, if you're not sure what you're doing when it comes to registry issues, I wouldn't let it do it's thing. After one bad experience where it erased an entry off my registry, which made my PC not boot, I take extra care using it again.
Microsoft Silverlight installs over 2,000 Registry entries, most of them
having to do with other languages. I would like to see CCleaner give
me the option to delete unnecessary language support, thereby
reducing the size and search time of the Registry. (Silverlight should
have presented the option of which languages to include during
installation.)
I'd love to see help to explain what each option for cleaning is and the consequences of using it. For example, if you were to hover over the Office 2007 entry, CCleaner could tell me that it will clean out the list of recent documents in Office programs if selected.
It is a great utility.
http://www.piriform.com/docs/ccleaner/ccleaner-rules
I don't remember Not using CCleaner..put it on all windows systems..personal/other..to bad they don't make one for Linux..use bleachbit for that..
Your post really helped me to understand the Optimize Your System To Run At Its Best With CCleaner
It has great details and yet it is easy to understand.
That's what i was looking for. I will definitely share it with others.
Thanks for sharing.
I use CCEnhancer together with CCleaner
Literally minutes after this article's publication, CCleaner 3.11 came out (:
An excellent piece of software used everytime I either undelete software or virus from PC's
CCleaner is my go-to program. I install it on every computer that I work on/setup. I like really like the simple UI, and its easy to teach people to use. The only thing that I would like to see Piriform change is how the updates are done. Theres got to be an easier way.
Good article Danny! I use CCleaner, and recommend it to family and clients. Although, if they aren't savvy I ask them to NOT use the registry cleaner.
I've also found that sometimes I can use CCleaner's uninstall when the Windows version doesn't work. Doesn't make sense, but that's what I've found.