Does anyone still use tune up utilities like CCleaner?

Kol12 · 17 Feb 2021

Paul Black said:

Hello @Kol12,

Although Win 10 does a pretty good job [ but still far from perfect ] of keeping the OS tidy and clean, I think a combination of Tools is required for deeper and non-destructive cleaning.

I personally use on a regular basis, Disk Cleanup - Advanced [ .bat ], Event Viewer Cleaner [ .bat ], CCleaner - FREE, and Glary Utilities - FREE. I exclude the REG cleaner on the last two options because there is really NO performance benefit, but more importantly, it can lead to system problems. The trick with the last two is to get the Settings right for personal needs.

You will find there are a LOT of Utilities that perform cleanup operations, obviously some better than others, and some that suit some peoples needs more than others.

I hope this helps.

I will take a look at these tools you've mentioned. Thanks Paul.

Kol12 · 17 Feb 2021

dalchina said:

Thank you for your reply.

I think you're overly concerned. And misreading that about its history. Good luck.

Maybe/Probably.

Helmut · 17 Feb 2021

I use nothing now. I came to the conclusion after using Ccleaner and other similar utilities that they are largely fiddling about with trivia that makes no difference or you can do in Windows and applications. Some features actually making performance worse.

Of course you have to attend to them wasting your time, when I'm sure most people have more useful things to do with their applications.

All such utilities are firmly at the bottom of the overall efficiency list, well, fallen right off for me.

Bree · 17 Feb 2021

Kol12 said:

Does CCleaner still come with baggage? Adware etc? Windows Defender routinely picks up CCleaner installers as PUP.

Yes, the Standard installer comes with bundled 'offers' that you have to be careful not to accept. This will be legitimate software (unsurprisingly Avast AV is often offered). It's this 'bundling' that often triggers Defender.

Better to download the Slim build which has no bundled extras, better still download the Portable build (which is the one I use). These are usually available about a week after a new Standard build is released.

https://www.ccleaner.com/ccleaner/builds

Ivan Petrov · 17 Feb 2021

Kol12 said:

Does CCleaner still do a better job than Windows cleanup tools?

I've been using CCleaner for a long time years ago but had realized that playing with the registry is too delicate and dangerous for me. So, no more CCleaner /which is also updated too often somehow, IMO/, relying on Disk Cleanup only and some priceless tutorials from this Forum.

Ghot · 17 Feb 2021

@Kol12

I've been using CCleaner's Custom Clean and Registry (but not Health Check) for years. Been using it on Windows 10 since May 2020.
Haven't had any problems with CCleaner.

Does anyone still use tune up utilities like CCleaner?-seal-approval.png

badcrc · 17 Feb 2021

There must be tons of people who don't even know what temporary internet files are, never mind how to delete them.

What happens in that scenario - does your hard drive get full at some point ?

Say you had an old laptop with a small HDD and have been using it for years with no CCleaner or Disk Clean-up malarkey ?

Paul Black · 17 Feb 2021

Hello @badcrc,

badcrc said:

There must be tons of people who don't even know what temporary internet files are, never mind how to delete them.

What happens in that scenario - does your hard drive get full at some point ?

Say you had an old laptop with a small HDD and have been using it for years with no CCleaner or Disk Clean-up malarkey ?

Yes, it does NOT matter how careful you are, the disk will keep filling up until you do something about it. Normally after running a cleaner, I always Defragment [ HDD ONLY of course ].

As an example, have a look at this . . .

Free Up Drive Space

> How to Free Up Drive Space in Windows 10

I hope this helps.

Berton · 17 Feb 2021

I've used CCleaner [original known as CrapCleaner] on occasion when clients' complaints of slowness wasn't corrected by Windows but NEVER the installed version.

RolandJS · 17 Feb 2021

Taking advice from Paul Black, Snick, Bree, Lady Fitzerald, and others... I use portable ccleaner for removing browsers' cache files, some cookies when necessary; Events cleaner and other batch files from Paul Black and Snick. l don't know about Window 10, I'm a Windows 7 person, I know my browsers accumulate cache files, more and more, never less and less, their respective cache pots have to be sped-read (and maybe loaded into memory?) by the browsers. Cleaning these cache pots frees up harddrive byte-space (anyone remember Firefox of old?) and frees up some browsers' load time.