Entertainment For Lively Minds
Ask the Massive: cleanup pc software
Posted by paulwright on 7 October 2011 - 3:20pm.
Another request for assistance that has absolutely nothing to do with music.
Dell have helpfully informed me that my PC runs and starts up slowly because of an accumulation of crud. Then ruined it by trying to sell me something to tidy it all up for me. I assume that there is something out there that will do the same job for free - but that there is also a lot that will use it as an opportunity to give details of my overdraft to the Russian Mafia (wonder if they will have more joy out of Santander than I have?).
Can anyone recommend something free or very cheap to improve the running of my system - because I cant afford a new one.
Thanks
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C Cleaner
is what I use as well as Malwarebytes Anti-malware software. My 6 year old PC runs quickly enough for me.
This is a link to a review with download link there in.
http://download.cnet.com/ccleaner/
Both of these are great
!
Agreed...
...easy to use as well. C Cleaner is really excellent.
I can also recommend...
...Spybot Search and Destroy as well as Revo Uninstaller which will help prevent crud being left on your PC in the first place.
A flux
capacitor is good too
Or failing that
an Improbability Drive
Only if
you can get it back off those pesky robots.
Or failing that
an Orgone Accumulator
I think you'll find that the BOFH
recommends the use of a bulk de-gaussing coil.
Or
The Acme Cayote Sproggledocket Cleanser. (V 1.22/6 only tho')
This one's good as well
http://www.iobit.com/advancedsystemcareper.html
What a star you are niallb
My daughter reformatted one of my hardrives about six months ago by mistake! I lost years of photographs and family videos which I thought were gone for good. I've just downloaded your suggested programme and there was a tool that can bring back deleted files. I'm in the process of restoring about four thousand pics and many vids.
Thank you so much. The massive strike again - Cheers you all and especially niallb.
HURRAH!!!!
PS I was about to recommend ccleaner as I use it myself.
Recuva
can do this as well. Brought loads of stuff back from the dark side with that baby.
I don't know why I didn't come straight to the massive!
Advice from various friends etc said no hope. I'm so glad I didn't do anything to the drive since. Thanks for the tip.
You could always restore it to the factory settings
after you've saved anything you want to keep to a hard drive.
I did that once when I had a virus that was impossible to shift. It sped it up back to the way it was when I first bought it.
*disclaimer - Although i'm not very computer-literate and if the other programs work, go for it.
have you got a spare hard drive bay inside?
Get a new hard drive which can be got very cheaply these days, put the old one in yr spare drive bay do a clean install of Windows on the new drive (make sure the PC boots from the new drive not their old one) and reinstall whatever programmes you need . You can still access your files on yr old hard drive but your operating system is on a nice clean drive and should run much faster.
Also
Run
msconfig
from the Start/Run menu and have a look at what programs are running on the Startup page. You can google their names to find out if they are needed. There'll be loads of crap in there and this slows down your PC. oftentimes they are utilities like checking the age of the print cartridge (HP are buggers for this). Just uncheck them. It will say something about non standard settings. This is fine. The biggest speedup I did recently was to remove McAfee security and install the free Microsoft one. Took 10 mins and made massive difference.
Oh, and defrag your hard drive from System Tools.
Seconded.
Dump any commercial anti-virus and use either the MS freebie or the free Avast one; it's much lighter on your PC than MacAfee.
If you're running XP, and want to take control of what starts when your PC starts up, grab Mike Lin's excellent freebie utility:
http://www.mlin.net/StartupCPL.shtml
Funky
That looks funky Vulpes. I shall install that myself. I'm always installing little utilities and converters etc and they all leave clag behind them. What's a good registry cleaner that won't lobotomise the PC? Ideally one that makes a backup before doing it's thang, ideally with a roll back facility?
thanks
I am sure that with this and a nice hot cup of tea I can reverse effectively the polarity of the neutron flow. Trying CC cleaner now.
ccCleaner
I'm a fan of ccCleaner -- it's good for controlling what's happening at start-up and it's useful for freeing up disk space.
However, hand on heart, I can't say it's ever really speeded up any of my computers.
The only things I've ever done that resulted in a noticeable increase in speed on an old computer were:
* Installing more RAM
* Using a bigger hard disk (when the previous one was full)
* Reinstalling the operating system
similar topic
I have an old steam powered laptop that I want to bin. Is there a free download out there that will completely wipe everything? I basically want a clean pc with no trace of any history (eg online banking or shopping) which I can sell to some mug for £20 and get shut with peace of mind.
Actually
There's a new feature on ccCleaner called Drive Wiper. I think it's similar to other utilities, which fill your disk with a continuous series of zeros.
No method (other than taking out the hard drive and twatting it with a hammer) is 100% effective, but I expect these methods are good enough.
Installing Linux is a good way of repurposing an old laptop. (The one I'm writing this on is about nine-years-old.)
Takes time
Drive wiper is great, but to use the maximum setting (35 passes) it takes a very long time. Be prepared to leave it running upwards of 5 hours.
But if you're not using the PC anyway it makes no odds. Just make sure you disable any power-off options.
the only way to be really, or reasonably sure, is to physically take the hard disk out and destroy it. Well, do what you can to make it unusable (they're not called hard disks for nothing)
Linux
Not a pc buff but guess that is a different OS to Windows XP? Is that tricky to install?
Not usually
Just follow the onscreen instructions.
The issue is usually whether the Linux OS has all the necessary drivers (often with regards to wifi cards and webcams). But you can try it out for nothing without installing it (by booting the OS from a CD or USB drive). Most distributions have Firefox as the browser, so it's feasible just to use it for web browsing. Flash and Java are supported as well.
Which one to choose probably depends on how old your PC is.
These days, you'll find that
most relatively recent PCs will only contain components that the latest Linux 'distributions' (aka versions in non-geek speak) will happily recognise and work with.
There's loads of help available on the web, so if you have a spare system, or can browse on your phone, you can tinker with a Linux installation while getting help online.
As has been mentioned, by far the best way to check out Linux is to download one of the bootable CD versions; just figure out how to instruct your machine to try to boot from the CD first (before it does so from the hard drive) and you can tinker as much as you like without making any changes to what's on your hard disk, by sticking the Linux CD in your CD drive and restarting the box.
Format
Format the hard drive.
Nope
Formatting the hard drive doesn't delete any data at all.
I didn't know that
I thought it removed everything. You learn something new every day!
Put simply
formatting a drive just changes the instructions regarding where everything is. But the files are generally still there.
Formatting a drive is like
sending out Scrotum, the wrinkled retainer, with a bundle of little white wooden posts. He wanders out onto the field, and places the posts at strategic points, marking off the divisions of the pitch.
Back on the side-line, Pedant, the record keeper, erases the record of where the posts were the last time the pitch was re-lined, and records where the new ones are. The pitch has been reformatted.
Every time a member of the Village Veterans takes to the pitch, Pedant tells them where they are playing; "You're at silly-mid-off, Carruthers. Go and find the little white post marked 'silly-mid-off' and start playing there."
Carruthers goes straight to the relevant post, and that's where he starts his game and stands until the last old cricketer leaves the crease. His footfall during the afternoon is clustered around the post marked 'silly-mid-off'.
Hence little has changed at grass blade level except where the players have been that afternoon; their footprints tell the tale. The majority of the pitch still bears the imprint of previous matches.
Yes, use this:
http://eraser.heidi.ie/
it's opensource, and it meets US Gov DoD standards for secure deletion.
Be prepared to leave it erasing for some considerable time; it's REALLY throrough, and takes a REALLY long time, especially if you use the Gutmann 35 pass (i.e. most secure) setting. However, once it's finished, no one will be able to recover any data from your drive.
What I Use
I use CCleaner (as mentioned above) to get rid of crap and speed my system up and Spybot Search & Destroy (which is also mentioned above) to limit the crap that can accumulate.
Windows 7 (if that's what you're using) supposedly defrags your hard drive automatically from time to time but it doesn't do a very thorough job. Auslogics Disk Defrag does it properly and can optimise it for the programs and files you use most frequently. I'm not sure if it's free or paid-for. You'll have to Google that info. I got my copy free from a computer magazine disc about a year ago.
I too ditched McAfee security and installed Microsoft Security Essentials. It does the job without cluttering your system up with unnecessary extras that you don't really need and it's completely free.
I don't know why anyone uses Norton & McAfee any more (Actually I do. It's because they pay all the major manufacturers to pre-install limited trial versions to hook the non-savvy punters and hit them every year for license updates.)
I also use CrystalDiskInfo to monitor the condition of my hard drive. It flags up any problems in time for you to replace a drive that's heading south. Can save you having to restore from a backup at an inconvenient time (i.e. right in the middle of something) by giving you advance warning. You do keep up with your backups, don't you? You -will- be sorry one day if you don't!
Tune Up Utilities
Works fine for me.
http://www.tune-up.com/products/tuneup-utilities/
Probably this would be the hard way, but....
....when I'm in the mood, I'll re-install Windows and start again from a clean install (I've done the same for MacOS actually). Install Windows, patches, service packs etc. Then start installing the software all again. The problem with this is
a) it takes ages
b) you have to be sure you have an adequate backup of every damn thing in there
c) you have to have the install media for everything (possible difficulties for anything bought online)
However, the last couple of times I've been prompted into doing this by either replacing or imminent failure (actual error messages) of the physical hard drive, so putting a new one in and using the old as a source of content was reasonably effective. Even the Windows machine migration tool was pretty useful. Apart from doing an XP export and refused entry on a Vista machine, having to do a restore and re-export with the right version of the utility....
Not sure I'd want to do it if I didn't have a weekend clear.
Certainly look hard at any anti-virus software you have on there, they are usually major resource hogs. The Microsoft freebie has been fine for me, but there are others.
As for cleaner apps, my only objection is whether to trust them or not. There's a lot of scare-ware and spy-ware claiming to do this kind of job, so who can you trust. Even if they do work as advertised, it's pretty hypothetical I know but they would probably invalidate any kind of warrantee or support arrangement you might have, but then who has one anyway, or expects that kind of support from Microsoft or anyone else. As for trust, what these things do is muck around in the fundamentals, so it makes me nervous to say the least. Hence I'd rather go the clean install route.
Would it not be easier
to clone the old hard drive onto the new one?
Easier, but not necessarily any cleaner.
I used the replacement events (hard drive or whole machine) to prompt a clean up.