Best free registry editors
Three top Windows cleaners boost performance
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By
Scott Spanbauer
Over months or years of normal use, Windows accumulates thousands of orphaned files, useless settings, and other detritus that can noticeably slow down your applications. These performance-enhancing utilities remove this digital refuse to help your system run at its top speed. |
Make your PC run like new ... almost
Perhaps this has happened to you: after years of installing and uninstalling applications, opening e-mail attachments, and putting my broadband connection to the test downloading gigabytes of rich Web content, I found one day that my computer had lost its sparkle.
Opening Web pages took forever. Applications launched with the leisureliness of a teenager who must catch the early bus to high school. My bleeding-edge PC had been reduced to a burbling sludge. If only I could return to those days of minty-fresh, new-computer performance.
Installing yet another application in order to speed things up may seem counterintuitive. I'm not a big fan of nonessential utilities, but I found that all three of the performance enhancers I tested — Business Logic's U.S. $30 WinCleaner One Click Professional Clean, Piriform's free CCleaner, and PC Pitstop's $30 Optimize — are worthwhile.
After using these programs to blow the cobwebs out of my system, its startups perked up a bit and my everyday computing seemed snappier. All three work with both Vista and XP. They clear out junk files that accumulate in temp folders and caches, unwanted applications and services that launch automatically at startup, and unnecessary Registry entries that point to files, folders, and other objects that no longer exist on the PC.
True, you can rectify many of these situations manually using a variety of tools built into various nooks and crannies of Windows itself. But why bother when a free or low-cost tool can do the work for you in just seconds?
One performance issue these programs don't address is disk optimization. Once you've cleared out the cruft, I suggest that you defragment your disk using one of the free utilities I recommended in the June 12 newsletter. The aggravation you avoid could be your own.
#1: BUSINESS LOGIC WINCLEANER ONE CLICK PROFESSIONAL CLEAN 11
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$30 version
94 More info |
WinCleaner One Click costs money, but tightwads should give its 30-day free trial a spin before opting for one of the free Windows-washing alternatives. The program finds and removes more junk files, dead-end Registry entries, broken shortcuts, cookies, and other system clutter than other system-sweeping utilities.
WinCleaner also identifies programs that you may want to prevent from starting automatically with Windows and removes hard-to-uninstall applications. The program offers a handy utility for moving installed applications — Registry entries and all — from one location to another.
On my test system, WinCleaner found almost 2GB of stuff to delete, including more than 500 unnecessary Registry entries. The utility gives you several options for deleting these files and defaults to backing up all but the junk and temp files to another location. This allows you to undo your changes should something go wrong — although in my experience, WinCleaner's aggressive tidying causes no problems.
Figure 1. WinCleaner One Click's scan results show the amount of disk space the cleaning will recover.
Advanced options in the program let you specify its default settings, such as which hard drives to scan (including network drives) and whether to scrub your browsers' cache, history, and typed URLs for privacy (on by default).
The very paranoid can set WinCleaner to destructively overwrite deleted files using either one-pass, two-pass, or the slower but more secure Department of Defense standard method. You can also run each of WinCleaner's cleanup modules independently, which gives you even more control over its scanning and deletion options (such as which browser's files to scan or which specific Registry keys to delete).
#2: PIRIFORM CCLEANER 2.1
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Free version
91 More info |
CCleaner is freeware that apparently earns its keep by allowing the Yahoo Toolbar for Internet Explorer to piggyback onto its installer (an option you can uncheck during installation). The program removes temp files, history, and cookies from IE, Firefox, and Opera. It also tidies up your Registry and deletes temp files created by Windows and other applications.
Like other cleaning utilities, CCleaner lets you uninstall applications or banish them from starting automatically with Windows. Optional settings let you run CCleaner itself at each startup and skip deleting temp files less than 48 hours old (a feature that's enabled by default). This is not a bad idea if your computer crashes and you have CCleaner set to run at startup automatically.
CCleaner is less aggressive than WinCleaner. It found only 338MB of junk files to delete on my test PC, though the program discovered about the same number of Registry issues as WinCleaner. Unlike WinCleaner's one-click interface, however, you have to run each of CCleaner's main scans separately. These include scans for junk files and browser clutter, the Registry, and app startups and uninstalls.
And although it lacks WinCleaner's undo feature, CCleaner does offer to back up your Registry changes to a .reg file just in case any of the changes cause problems.
CCleaner packs a bigger punch than WinCleaner in one area: file deletion. Not only does it do one-pass and DOD-standard overwrites, the program also obliterates your unwanted files by using the stronger National Security Administration (7-pass) and Gutmann (35-pass) techniques. Not bad for a freebie.
#3: PC PITSTOP OPTIMIZE 2
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$30 version
84 More info |
Like CCleaner and WinCleaner, PC Pitstop's optimizer looks for junk files, Registry problems, and unwanted startup applications. But this utility also accelerates your surfing experience by tweaking various browser settings, including packet sizes and the number of simultaneous open connections allowed.
The trial version of the program scans your PC for free, presenting fairly detailed lists of the junk files, Registry entries, and other digital deadwood it intends to prune. However, to complete the operation, you must pony up the $30 purchase price.
Optimize was even less aggressive than CCleaner when I ran it on my test system, finding only about 108MB of junk files to delete. However, the program suggested dozens of browser-acceleration settings, including many arcane configuration settings in Firefox. It also noted three startup programs I could kiss goodbye, and it found more than 1,000 superfluous Registry entries.
You can deselect individual items before optimizing, but unlike the other optimizers I tried, PC Pitstop's Optimize 2 doesn't offer backup or undo options nor does it go to any lengths to thoroughly wipe the files you want to securely erase. Also missing are the ability to erase your browser history and to clear the cache of any browser except Internet Explorer.
Even with these limitations, Optimize does a good job maintaining Windows and is a worthy alternative to WinCleaner and CCleaner.
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UPDATE 2008-09-12: Obviously, these are not the only three Windows cleaners you can choose from. Webroot's $20 Window Washer 6.5 deletes temp files and hides your tracks online, including (cough) "adult content history." For $20 per year, Iolo's System Mechanic 8 also optimizes your Registry, 'Net connections, and more. If you like the fact that CCleaner is free but are looking for a second opinion, ATF Cleaner 3 is another popular free utility that deletes your Windows and browser temp files. At this time, it is not yet compatible with Windows Vista, unfortunately. |
Scott Spanbauer writes frequently for PC World, Business 2.0, CIO, Forbes ASAP, and Fortune Small Business. He has contributed to several books and was technical reviewer of Jim Aspinwall's PC Hacks. He alternates writing the Best Software column with Ian "Gizmo" Richards.