WARNING
Before I retired I used to be the I.T. Manager of my company for many years. I've been using CCleaner for about four years now, both professionally and privately. It's a great program.
But I cannot recommend it to everyone, especially people who don't know a lot about computers. Many temporary files are there for a good reason. Many others are not. Certain applications will leave large temporary files on your computer after you uninstall them. You need to know what you are doing before cleaning your temp folder.
Another thing about running a CCleaner scan is that it will, by default, clear your internet browser cache and cookies. If you want to use the program and keep your cache then make sure that you configure the scan to ignore your browser.
Next, the registry cleaner. It is a complete myth that cleaning your registry will speed up your computer. Also, CCleaner tends to ignore many redundant items in your registry. It's better to educate yourself and clean your registry manually. This will still have no effect on the speed of your computer, and it carries the risk of accidentally deleting an important key.
Start up options: CCleaner allows you to disable applications that run in the background when your computer boots up. This can significantly increase the speed of your computer, but you can access these options by clicking Start, Run, and entering msconfig and clicking on Startup. It's essentially the same thing.
By all means, use CCleaner, but don't forget that there are risks involved.
A few personal tips to speed up your computer*
1) Turn off system restore (as Crowley mentioned)
2) If you don't receive email directly to your computer, and you don't visit dodgy websites, then you don't need an antivirus program. Antivirus programs are incredibly greedy for your system resources.
3) Right click My Computer, go to Properties, Advanced, Performance, Advanced, Change, select System Managed Size, click Set, then Ok. This allows Windows to manage your paging file. In a few years many of us will probably no longer need page files as our RAM sizes will be extremely big.
4) Open explorer and right click on your hard disk drive(s), click properties, and untick the box that says "Allow indexing service..." Then apply, and wait a bit for the change to take place. If it pops up with any messages then click "Ignore All".
5) Finally, if you really know what you're doing, create your own customised windows install disk using nLite, incorporate the latest service pack, remove all the stuff that you don't need, etc. My Core 2 Duo E6700 with 2GB RAM boots up in 10 seconds.
*if you are using XP, if you are using Vista, then you fail.
Originally posted by hopscotchI've downloaded nLite, but haven't used it yet. It works a charm?
[b]WARNING
Before I retired I used to be the I.T. Manager of my company for many years. I've been using CCleaner for about four years now, both professionally and privately. It's a great program.
But I cannot recommend it to everyone, especially people who don't know a lot about computers. Many temporary files are there for a good reason. Many ot ...[text shortened]... 0 seconds.
*if you are using XP, if you are using Vista, then you fail.[/b]
Another thing you can do is kill all the services you don't need. I disabled ALL non-essential services and then enable ones I see I need later.
This has led to a huge speed increase, as I only have 1GB of RAM on my baby...
Originally posted by hopscotchWell, I have two questions, although essentially they're both the same question.
Next, the registry cleaner. It is a complete myth that cleaning your registry will speed up your computer. Also, CCleaner tends to ignore many redundant items in your registry. It's better to educate yourself and clean your registry manually. This will still have no effect on the speed of your computer, and it carries the risk of accidentally deleting an i ...[text shortened]... Run, and entering msconfig and clicking on Startup. It's essentially the same thing.
How can we manually clean the registry if we don't know exactly WTF all that stuff is?
and
How can we disable the applications that run in the background when the computer boots up if we don't know exactly WTF all that stuff is?
I mean, I'm reasonably intelligent, and I have built computers from scratch. I just don't know WTF all that stuff in the registry and the application list is.
Originally posted by SuzianneWhen you uninstall an application, you can usually safely just search through the registry and delete all references to it. Most of the time it is actually just obscure DLL registrations etc. that are left behind by crappy uninstall routines, so you won't be able to find them in any case.
Well, I have two questions, although essentially they're both the same question.
How can we manually clean the registry if we don't know exactly WTF all that stuff is?
and
How can we disable the applications that run in the background when the computer boots up if we don't know exactly WTF all that stuff is?
I mean, I'm reasonably intelligent, a ...[text shortened]... scratch. I just don't know WTF all that stuff in the registry and the application list is.
Like he said, your registry doesn't need too much tinkering and only if it gets REALLY large and fragmented can there be some performance problems. A defrag should sort that out for you - Auslogics has a free defrag product that works much better than the Windows one.
Disabling startup programs can be a hit'n'miss exercise. Check the programs you use often and NEED in the system tray or to start automatically.
Disable anything you see you don't really need.
MS Office, sound and video card software, Adobe and Java updater are obvious ones you can safely disable.
There is nothing that SHOULD run - except your anti-virus; anti-malware; firewall - although there are things you may WANT to run. Nothing you disable should make your system unbootable.
If the item you disabled is needed somewhere, you will quickly see this and then you can just go and enable it again.
Instead of using add/remove programs, I use Revo uninstaller which also removes much of the registry entries for the program being uninstalled - safely.
http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/downloads/2204204/revo-uninstaller
It's free, of course 🙂
And for help with Start-Up programs, I use StartUpLite - made by the makers of Malwarebytes.
http://www.malwarebytes.org/startuplite.php
Also free.