Clean Your Computer With CCleaner

I’m a CCleaner evangelist…I admit it. I have no stake in the software other than that I am glad it exists, use it frequently, and want to see its continued success.

So what is CCleaner? It is a free, cleaning and optimization tool to help your Windows computer operate quicker, safer, and more efficiently. It has a number of great features.

CCleaner removes unnecessary files that are left behind when you utilize software programs. When you search the internet, for example, your browser stores lots of information from the sites you browse including cookies issued by those sites. CCleaner wipes all of that clean. It also empties your recycle bin, deletes windows temporary files, cleans your recent documents history, etc. It does a very nice job of tidying up your hard drive and removing unneeded clutter.

Registry issues are often the cause of degraded Windows performance. A good and regular registry cleaning will help your system immensely over time. The registry cleaner function in CCleaner is effective, easy, and quick. You can even backup your registry from within the program just before performing a cleaning. I’ll admit that I rarely backup my registry before cleaning it. I’ve been using CCleaner for years and have never had a problem. Nonetheless, it wouldn’t be prudent of me to recommend that you not backup your registry.

In the tools palette of CCleaner is a feature that you can use to uninstall programs. It works in much the same way as the Windows Add/Remove Programs option that resides in Control Panel. I actually find the CCleaner version to be more reliable and therefore use it more frequently. On this same screen, you can also save a list of all of your installed programs to a text file.

Often when you install new software on your computer, the software will add a startup process. Some of these are important, others are completely a waste of computer resources. CCleaner makes it easy to disable or even delete those that are not important. You can generally do a Google search for a particular process name and find out whether or not you need to keep it. When in doubt, keep it. But if you find one you know you do not need, there is no easier way to disable it than with the use of CCleaner.

Among CCleaners options, is the level of deletion you would like it to invoke when getting rid of your files. Standard deletion of a file removes that file from the operating system, but that file is often still on the hard drive such that it can be recovered with the right software. Overwriting a file multiple times diminishes the likelihood that the file will be recoverable should your hard drive fall into the wrong hands. CCleaner gives you several options for secure deletion. It will delete with 3 passes to meet Department of Defense specification 5220.22 M, 7 passes which is labeled NSA, and then 35 passes using the Gutmann method which is essentially as secure as you can be short of melting your hard drive in boiling lava. Keep in mind, that the more passes you choose, the longer it will take CCleaner to do it’s work. This is especially true if you have not cleaned in a while.

You can set up a variety of custom options for CCleaner as well. You can have CCleaner always delete files from a particular folder on your system, always exclude a fileset that would normally be deleted, leave cookies to sites that you request (sites you may visit regularly and trust explicitly), etc. You can even set it to run automatically every time you start up your computer.

Yes it is…and there are no ads, no spyware, no adware…just a great program, provided at no charge. There is an option to install Yahoo toolbar as you install CCleaner. While this option is checked by default, you can easily uncheck it during the installation so that the toolbar does not install. And if you forget to do that, you can easily uninstall the toolbar using CCleaner!

Once again, I have nothing at stake here. That said, I end up working on a lot of people’s computer problems and it is apparent to me that the world would be a better place if more people knew about CCleaner. I say this knowing that CCleaner has had over 250 million downloads. I don’t know who all of those people are, but they are not the people I know whose computers are in desperate need of a cleaning. So, if you are one who has not cleaned your computer recently, hop on over to CCleaner.com and download your free copy. You’ll be glad you did.