A medium spring clean for your PC
Need to free up more resources? With third-party you can give Windows a more thorough clean. tools,
Dissatisfied with the results of spring cleaning with Windows’ own tools? Time to go further. In this section, we’ll perform a deeper clean on areas already covered, with the help of free third-party tools, which can also reach areas not touched by Windows. As always, caution should be your keyword. While cleaning out gigs of data is satisfying, it can lose its allure if you’ve been hasty and discover useful shortcuts, such as the Jump lists of programs, have been removed.
REMOVE APPS THOROUGHLY
Standard program uninstallers tend to be conservative, leaving lots of detritus behind. This can soon mount up, and while you could employ the services of a Registry cleaner, the best time to clean up after a program is when you remove it.
Our tool of choice for cleaning out old programs is IObit Uninstaller ( www. iobit.com/en/advanceduninstaller.php), which offers a “powerful scan” feature after a program’s standard uninstaller finishes. This roots out leftover files and Registry entries, which you review and decide whether or not to keep.
During installation, look out for prompts to install Advanced SystemCare Free — it’s from IObit, it’s safe, but not needed for this feature. Once done, Uninstaller launches and you’ll see a list of desktop programs. A number of options appear on the left, from ‘All Programs’ to ‘Large Programs’ and ‘Infrequently Used’. The latter is good for weeding out the ones you’re not using.
You’ll see a bin button appear on the right of each program — click it to uninstall. IObit Uninstaller offers to take a System Restore point before uninstalling, which we recommend for safety purposes. It then invokes the program’s own uninstaller — ignore prompts to reboot now — and performs its own powerful scan. This roots out potential leftovers in the form of files and Registry entries — you review the list, decide what to remove, then reboot if necessary.
To remove programs in batches, select each program you want to get rid of, then click ‘Uninstall’. The Programs list focuses on desktop programs only, so select ‘ Windows Apps’ to get a list of apps you’ve installed through the Microsoft Store, enabling you to remove those, too. Select ‘Toolbars & Plug-ins’ to quickly review all the browser add-ons you have installed (all popular variants — IE, Chrome, Firefox, Opera and Edge — are supported), plus remove those you don’t want, need or recognise. It’s a quick and effective way to trim down your browser’s resource usage.
CLEAN MORE SETTINGS
One of the best free cleanup tools is CCleaner ( www.piriform.com). The app boasts a number of tools to help you clean out the junk and recover gigabytes of files. Its main cleaning component searches more than just basic Windows settings, including browser settings (a source of hundreds of megabytes of potential waste), as well as popular programs and apps. It’s tempting to click ‘Analyze’, then clean out everything it recommends, but you’ll end up losing potentially useful settings. The step-by-step guide reveals how to use it to free up space without deleting those files you didn’t know you needed.
Outside of its primary cleaning element, CCleaner offers a number of other tools. Its Registry cleaner is potentially the most dangerous, so skip that. Instead, select Tools, where you’ll find seven cleanup tools. The Uninstall section works in the same way as Windows’ Apps & Features tool, but is outclassed by IObit Uninstaller.
Startup provides you with a more comprehensive list of programs and items that launch with Windows. This is split into three tabs. ‘ Windows’ contains a list of programs, organised by location (Registry or startup folder). It’s the same list as in Task Manager, with one crucial difference: you can permanently delete entries (with care), as opposed to just disabling them.
Switch to ‘Scheduled Tasks’ to review what tasks Windows and other programs have set up — you’ll find items such as backup tasks, program update tasks, and so on here. Again, you can disable or delete items. Select ‘Advanced’ mode and various Windows-related tasks are shown. These should be left alone, so leave the box unselected after reviewing it.
One final tab — ‘Context Menu’ — is worth exploring. Frustrated at how programs clutter up the menus that appear when you right-click items in File Explorer? You’ll find these items here, referencing ‘Directory’ (when you right-click a folder), ‘Drive’ and ‘File’ (when you right-click a specific file type — sadly, the actual file isn’t listed). Disable or delete those you don’t want — if they keep coming back, examine the program’s settings to see if you can disable them from there, or use its intransigence as an excuse to remove the app completely.
MORE TWEAKS
The ‘Browser Plugins’ tab works in a similar way to IObit Uninstaller’s Toolbars & Plugins section. Skip the Disk Analyzer and Duplicate Finder tools for now — we’ll look at these (and more powerful alternatives) later on.
System Restore lets you view all the Restore points on your PC. Each one is clearly labeled, and you can remove them individually or in groups (hold
Ctrl as you click each one to select it) without affecting others. The most recent Restore point is always grayed out for safety reasons.
The final tool, Driver Wiper, makes it possible to wipe free space or an entire drive securely. Instead of marking deleted files as space available for writing over, making them vulnerable to data recovery tools, you can securely wipe the space by overwriting it.
This is slow, and should only be done when you have sensitive data to wipe. You can also wipe free space and mark non-deleted files and folders for secure removal from CCleaner’s main Cleaner component — scroll to the bottom of the ‘Windows’ tab, and select each box (‘Custom Files and Folders’ refers to any files or folders you specify under ‘Options > Include’). If you’d like CCleaner to securely wipe all files from its Cleaner tool, go to ‘Options > Settings’ and select ‘Secure file deletion (Slower)’.