CCleaner…

As a follow up to last night’s post about Revo Uninstaller Pro, I’m posting about CCleaner. In the same vein as Revo, CCleaner is a utility that will get rid of all the extra crud floating around your computer and hopefully speed it up and keep it from getting bogged down in the long run.

Before we dive too far in, I want to warn you that when you are installing CCleaner, it is going to have a Yahoo! bar for your browser checked by default. This is a way for them to get some revenue for their free product, however, installing more relatively unnecessary stuff is what we are trying to avoid. If you don’t want the Yahoo! bar, I would recommend tossing a couple of bucks their way if you find this utility useful.

Cleaner

The Cleaner feature is the first item of interest. Cleaner basically runs through your installed applications and Windows itself to clear out unwanted junk such as temporary files, cookies (method for websites to track you), “most recently used” lists.

As you can see below, on my computer, there were some huge files in my recycle bin and there were a ton of temporary files in a couple of different spots.

Registry

You can picture the registry of your computer as the directory at the entry of a large building. As people move in, move out, and switch floors, the directory gets updated. Sometimes.

In order to remove out of date information in your registry, you can run a scan and it will list items that no longer have a reason to be there. Before doing so, it will ask you to make a backup. I highly recommend this as it only takes a second and can solve any issues you have after cleaning the registry (which should be none).

More about cookies

While they sound delicious, cookies might be the dumbest, but one of the more usable items on the internet.

Essentially every site you go to deposits a cookie on your computer. This might seem a little strange, but what those little cookies do is hold information about your visit. Have you ever gone to a website and already had your screen name typed in a box? Or perhaps you are already logged into Facebook or Twitter when you arrive there. These are due to cookies on your computer.

However, not all sites are so nice about cookies. Ad sites like to put cookies on your computer so they can see where you go and what you browse and search for on the internet. Personally, I would like at least a little privacy, so I clear my cookies every week or two.

But what if I want too keep the good cookies and chuck the bad? CCleaner has a solution which can be found in the Options → Cookies menu. This menu gives you a chance to add any cookies you want to maintain so you can delete the rest of the riff-raff.

Do you have any other tools that you use to keep your computer in working order? Anybody have any experience with similar programs for a Mac?

Revo Uninstaller Pro…

I’m in an excellent position: I have a nearly new Windows 7 install on my laptop. However, before I upgraded back in early November, that wasn’t the case. I had installed program after program, mostly because I was doing a one-off thing. Over time, all those little programs got my computer messier and messier.

When I installed Windows 7, the performance boost was incredible. While part of that might have been the move from Vista to Win7, I think most of it was dumping all the extra program baggage.

I recently heard about a program called Revo Uninstaller Pro and decided to try it out. I’ve got a couple of programs on my computer that need to be eliminated, but nothing to bad. To test it out, I am going to be uninstalling Songbird 1.2 to make way for the brand-new Songbird.

Uninstalling

Generally, when you uninstall a program, little bits and pieces get left around your computer. Services that helped that program function might get left behind, certain files that were in use when the uninstall happened don’t get deleted, and the worst offender is all the entries left behind in your registry. We will take care of the registry issues later in the week.

Once you’ve installed Revo Uninstaller Pro and started it up, it will take you to the main uninstall page. Here, you need to select the program you want to uninstall, in my case, Songbird 1.2.

Revo then informs you of the steps to uninstalling: creating restore points in case something goes awry, running the programs standard uninstall, then scanning for any additional files or registry entries that were missed.

After running my scan, Revo found 17 items and 3 folders, that would have been left over to slow down my system had I relied on Songbird’s built in installer to remove it.

But wait! There’s more!

There are a couple other useful tools the Revo provides:

• Autorun Manager – A more advanced feature, the autorun manager allows you to customize what programs run when you start up your computer. An example of a relatively useless start up program on my computer is the webcam manager. I only use the webcam for the occasional Skype conversation, yet the webcam manager starts up every time and bogs down my computer. I’m not sure what it does, but if I find I need it, I can always re-enable it.
• Junk Files Cleaner – In order to speed up many of the day to day processes, your computer makes temporary copies of files from various areas of your computer and maintains logs on a variety of activities. While this can be helpful, if these temporary files get too big, they slow you down. It’s best to dump them once in a while.
• Windows Tools – This is just a gathering of programs you can find elsewhere on your computer. This way you don’t have to poke around for them.
• Browsers Cleaner – Clears all your browsing history, cookies, and other items from your browsers. Once again, you can find this info elsewhere, but here it is in one spot.
• Microsoft Office Cleaner – Clears the recent documents history for various MS Office products.
• Windows Cleaner – Clears out all kinds of history stored on your computer.
• Evidence Remover – When you delete a file, it isn’t necessarily gone. Imagine you are standing in front of a bunch of mailboxes. One of those boxes has a label with your name on it and some mail that is addressed to you. When you delete a file, it is like removing the label. The mail is still in the box and anyone who was interested could find out what was in the box that was formerly yours. Evidence Remover is like a paper shredder. No more deleted files hanging around hidden.

There is a bit more to these tools and Revo in general, but most of it is pretty advanced.

One feature that could come in handy, but I can’t test out because I don’t need it right now is the Hunter Mode. Essentially, it allows you to use  your cursor, click on something such as a window or a shortcut icon and eliminate a program that way. If you’ve ever tried to delete a desktop shortcut, you know that it tells you something of the effect, “This is a shortcut. If you want to delete the program, please go to the Add/Remove Program blah, blah, blah.” Hunter Mode saves you the trouble.

Got any stubborn programs that just keep hanging around? Find that your computer gets slowed down after a year or two of installing this and that? Try out Revo and let me know what you think. Any speed improvements?