Perform a heavyduty PC cleaning
Still not satisfied with your cleaning efforts? Read on for a collection of more advanced cleaning tips
At last, we reach the final curtain. If your PC still isn’t running as smoothly as you’d like, let us take more drastic steps to bring it under control in this last section on cleaning, diving deep to squeeze out every last possible optimisation we can find. We’ll also reveal some final tips for optimising drive space, to ensure your hard drive doesn’t fill up too quickly going forward.
First, you’ll notice that we haven’t included Registry cleaning as part of this feature. Registry cleaners would like you to think they can perform minor miracles when it comes to performance. They can’t. Even if they weren’t justifiably shunned for their ability to delete critical Registry entries along with genuinely redundant ones, the act of simply deleting Registry entries isn’t enough in itself to speed things up. The fact is, Windows 10 is more than capable of managing and optimising the Registry, so leave it well alone.
DEFRAG YOUR DRIVE
These days, more and more people have SSD drives, which don’t require defragging. Older platter-based (HDD) drives do, however, and it’s likely that you have at least one of these installed, either internally or attached via USB. Windows’ built-in defrag tool should be adequate for most people’s needs, but if you want to push the boat out further, download and install the free version of Defraggler ( www.piriform.com/ defraggler).
Defraggler can differentiate between SSD and HDD drives, so it only defrags the latter. Go to ‘Settings Options > Defrag tab’ and you can optimise your drive by moving larger files to the end of the drive, which can help boost performance that bit more. It’s also possible to analyse and defrag individual files via the ‘File list’ tab or by right-clicking the file in File Explorer — handy for a quick boost when working with specific large files.
MANAGE SERVICES
Startup programs aren’t the only things launching with Windows, extending your boot time, and grabbing resources — system (and third-party) services do, too. You can manually review and optimise these via the Services management console (type “services” into the Search box), but for a quick and easy optimisation, download the free version of PC Services Optimizer ( www.smart pcutilities.com/servicesoptimizer.html). Once installed, launch the app. After visiting Services Manager, waiting while the services list is populated, and clicking ‘Backup’, select ‘Automatic Tuneup’ and answer a series of questions split into four sections: ‘Hardware’, ‘Security’, ‘Internet & Network’ and ‘System Functions’. Click OK and any unnecessary services are promptly disabled, providing you with a minor speed boost.
Gamers should also check out Gaming Mode. This enables you to temporarily disable services by switching Gaming Mode on to maximise performance for gaming or similar processor-intensive tasks, such as HD video editing. Click ‘Preset’ and experiment with ‘Minimum’, ‘Normal’ or ‘Maximum’ settings, or manually select which settings to apply. Don’t be surprised if Windows changes appearance — when you switch off Gaming Mode, things should return to normal.
If things appear to go wrong after you’ve made your tweaks, simply click the ‘Rescue Center’ button, and select your backup to undo your changes.
VISUALISE DRIVE SPACE
Running out of drive space, but unsure what’s gobbling it all up? CCleaner offers a Disk Analyzer under Tools that can provide you with a quick summary for individual or collected drives, split into various categories (such as pictures, documents, or everything). When the scan completes, a pie chart divides everything up, while the largest files are listed below, complete with a checkbox enabling you to select specific files to delete via the right-click menu.
An alternative tool to try is SpaceSniffer ( www.uderzo.it/main_
products/space_sniffer). This portable tool (be sure to right-click it, and choose ‘Run as administrator’ to access all files on the selected drive) provides a visual view based on folder, rather than type, giving you insights into where all the space has gone, rather than what type of content is gobbling it up. Click a folder to peer inside it or double-click to go inside, and drill down deeper until you locate what’s taking all your space.
MORE CLEANING TIPS
Type “restore point” into the Search box, and click ‘Create a restore point’. Verify System Restore is switched on — if not, select your system drive, and click ‘Configure’ to do so. When you come to allocate space, consider limiting it to 5GB or 5%, whichever is smallest. This provides a good balance between giving you usable Restore points and not swallowing up too much drive space.
One obvious way to free up space without deleting any files is to compress them. The obvious solution would be to right-click the file (or folder) and choose ‘Send to > Compressed (zip) folder’, but while you can easily browse their contents in File Explorer, third-party apps can’t access the content unless you unzip it. An alternative is to use NTFS Compression instead, which compresses a selected folder while retaining its content. The folder is a little slower to process, but is more convenient to use. To do this, right-click the folder, and choose ‘Properties’. Click ‘Advanced’ under ‘General’ and select ‘Compress contents to save disk space’. Remember, it only works on NTFS-formatted hard drives.
One handy time-saving function is Jump Lists, which appear when you click ‘>’ next to an application in the Start menu, or right-click its taskbar entry. It pays to take the time to manage these thoroughly — click the pin icon next to an entry to pin it permanently to the top of the list, or right-click a redundant entry and choose ‘Remove from this list’ to get rid of it. You can quickly clear all Jump List entries using CCleaner (look in the ‘Windows Explorer’ section of the cleaner).
Finally, if you want to take full control of the startup procedure, download and run Autoruns ( bit.ly/
autoruns). Switch to the ‘Logon’ tab and you’ll find significantly more startup entries than those provided by Task Manager or CCleaner. Unselect an entry to disable it, or right-click it for more options, including deleting it and checking it for possible malware.