Quick question

nobby24

Webroot Window Washer, CCleaner or any others, which is the best or do they all do the same thing?

aliEnRIK

CCLEANER is the 'safest' option

spud17

And CCleaner is FREE.

Andy667

aliEnRIK wrote: »

CCLEANER is the 'safest' option

I would definitely second that.

HappyIdiotTalk

Here is a bit of advice for CCLEANER from http://www.tweakguides.com. I highly recommend downloading the guide for your operating system and have a read as its full of useful information in an easy to read format:

CCLEANER

CCleaner (Crap Cleaner) is a utility which can automatically find and remove a wide variety of essentially useless files from your system. It can be downloaded from the CCleaner Site, and is completely free to use.

CCleaner automates a task that you can perform manually to some extent (see further below), but which takes longer to do by hand; CCleaner finds and removes a range of files with common extensions identifying them as unnecessary files (e.g. .TMP, .BAK, .OLD) and also files which reside in known temporary or rubbish folders. It excludes important backup/temporary files that should not be deleted, and if used with caution it is usually quite safe in removing only unnecessary files.


CONFIGURATION ADVICE


To use CCleaner safely and optimally, run the program and click on the Options button, and first adjust the following settings:


1. Under the Settings section, untick all available boxes as none are vital to running CCleaner correctly.

2. Under the Cookies section, in the left pane are a list of cookies CCleaner will automatically delete if the Cookies option is ticked under Internet Explorer and/or Firefox on the main CCleaner screen. Select which cookies you would like to keep by highlighting it in the list and moving it using the '->' arrow to
the 'Cookies to keep' list.

3. Under the Include and Exclude sections you can add particular files or folders which you would like CCleaner to delete or exclude from deletion which it would not otherwise normally include/exclude.

4. Under the Advanced section I suggest unticking everything except 'Only delete files in Windows Temp folders older than 48 hours' which should be ticked for maximum safety, along with the 'Show prompt to backup registry issues'.

5. If you're not sure if you're running the latest version of CCleaner at any time, click the 'Check for updates now...' link at the bottom right corner to see if a newer version of CCleaner is available.


To start the cleaning process, first make sure you close all open applications to prevent conflicts if CCleaner tries to delete actively used files. Then open CCleaner and under the Cleaner>Windows tab make sure to untick anything which you don’t want deleted. For example, if you use Internet Explorer you should check to make sure you untick any components which you wish to keep (e.g. untick 'Temporary Internet Files' if you don't want your IE browser cache cleaned out). Note that you should only tick the options under the Advanced list at the bottom if you know what you are doing, otherwise they are all best left unticked.


Next, under the Cleaner>Applications tab CCleaner lists all your installed applications which it can help clean up. Once again, make sure you untick anything you wish to keep. If in doubt, untick it. For example, if you have a browser like Firefox installed, make sure you untick any portions of it which you don't want 'cleaned' (e.g. untick the 'Internet Cache' option).

ANALYZING AND DELETING UNNECESSARY FILES

Once you have all the relevant options ticked, click the Analyze button and after a while CCleaner will come up with a list of files it wants to delete. At this stage nothing has been deleted yet, so scroll through the list and make sure no files which you wish to keep are listed. Most of what CCleaner removes is not needed by the average user, but each person differs in what they want, so review the list carefully. The files typically found unnecessary by CCleaner include Most Recently Used (MRU) lists (i.e. the path to the last few documents you opened in a particular application), log files, temporary setup files for drivers and applications, and browser cache files.

If you have any doubts, or want some of these files kept, go back to the Windows and/or Application tabs and untick any areas you don't want CCleaner to clean and click Analyze again. Once you're happy to continue click the 'Run Cleaner' button to permanently remove the listed files.

Finally, the Registry function in CCleaner attempts to find redundant Registry entries. To start with, tick all the options available and then click the 'Scan for Issues' button. A whole range of "issues" may be found, all of which are generally harmless. Click the 'Fix selected issues' button, and make sure to save a backup when prompted, then when prompted again click 'Fix All Selected Issues'. If in doubt, do not use this functionality, and see the Windows Registry section for more details of what Registry cleaning entails.