One difference between ACleaner and CCleaner is that it is slightly more complicated to select the items that should be cleaned. CCleaner displays them in the main interface right away while they have to be selected in the settings in the ACleaner interface.

The items that can be cleaned are divided into categories like Windows, browsers or applications which are divided into further categories like MS Office or system in the Windows category or Internet Explorer, Opera, Google Chrome or Firefox in the browsers category.

Items like cookies, temporary Internet files or recent documents can be selected individually or all at once by right-clicking in the interface of each category.

ACleaner provides additional options to clean Registry settings next to cleaning files in the Windows operating system. This is actually an easier process as it takes one click to scan the Registry for issues and leftovers.

There are options to deselect specific items that are excluded from future scans. Custom items and locations can be added to ACleaner just like they can be added to CCleaner. This is interesting for users who want to clear data that is not included by the default categories like portable software files.

Another interesting option is the ignore list that can be used to protect items so that they are never cleaned during cleanups.

The scheduler can be used to enable automatic cleanups in intervals that range from every 15 minutes to every eight hours.

ACleaner has all the options needed to cleanup the Windows operating system regularly and effectively. The software program can be downloaded from the developer’s website.

Wipe will automatically scan the system upon startup offering to clear the history and traces right away or switch to advanced mode which is displaying a list of analyzed items and the amount of files on the disk, entries in the Windows Registry and the total size of the files in a list.

The items that are found are divided into categories like Windows, web browsers like Firefox or Internet Explorer and applications like Skype or Microsoft Office.

CCleaner provides a better overview of the elements that are analyzed. Wipe on the other hand displays the previously mentioned file size, Registry and file counts for each item individually which can be very helpful in determining the biggest offenders.

Each item in the list can be selected individually by clicking on the checkbox in front of its line. It is furthermore possible to select or deselect all items in a category by selecting the category header (for instance Windows 7). This will select or deselect all items automatically.

Items that can be cleared with Wipe include:

• Windows: clipboard, mru list, temporary Internet files, rss feeds carche, recent wallpapers, thumbnail caches..
• Firefox, Opera, Internet Explorer: temporary Internet files, download history, cookies, passwords..
• Windows Media Player: recent items, autocomplete and record path histry..
• Java, Flash: temporary Internet files
• Microsoft Office: recently accessed items, autocomplete history..

Missing are options to add programs or paths that are not included in the program yet. This includes for instance the Google Chrome web browser which cannot be cleaned with the program.

A click on the delete button will clear the history of all selected items. A standard delete will be performed which can be changed in the program’s options to make the traces unrecoverable. Available deletion methods are one-pass anti-recovery, DOD anti-recovery, Gutmann or Russian Gost anti-recovery (the last three only available after registration).

The deletion of files can take additional time depending on the choice in the menu. Wipe can close any running process before the history is cleared which is for instance important if the web browser is running all the time on the system.

Wipe is a good alternative to CCleaner. It lacks the customizability but offers a better overview of the files, registry entries and sizes of the entries that it lists in its interface. The program can be downloaded from the developer’s website.

• Improved Windows 7 jump list cleaning.
• Improved Windows 7 thumbnail cache cleaning.
• Added support for Windows Server 2008 R2.
• Improved 64-bit support and performance.
• Fixed issue with Windows 7 task scheduler.
• Fixed issue with Startup tool, displaying incorrect folder contents.
• Added support for AVG Antivirus 9.0.
• Added support for ExcludeKey in INI files.
• Improved support for wildcards and RECURSE/REMOVESELF.
• Fixed minor GUI bugs in non-English versions.
• Fixed minor GUI usability issues.
• Improved input validation.
• Lots of minor bugs fixed.

The new version of CCleaner is as usual available as an installer (which tries to add the Yahoo toolbar), a portable version and a slim version which both come without the toolbar. The program can be downloaded directly from the homepage of the developers where it is available for all supported operating systems.

The broken links checker will automatically scan the Windows Start Menu for broken shortcuts. Each shortcut found to not working anymore will be displayed in its interface giving the user the option to delete them from the start menu.

Some or all of the broken shortcuts can be selected in the overview. A click on the finish button will delete all selected links from the Windows Start Menu. The software program will only delete the shortcuts and not the folders that they reside in.

It should be noted that popular system cleaners such as CCleaner are also capable of deleting broken shortcuts from the start menu. An easy way to delete empty folders in the Windows Start Menu is to use a program like Remove Empty Directories and point it to the path on the computer system that stores the start menu entries (Documents and Settings\All Users\Start Menu\).

It does not come close to the options offered by CCleaner but is nevertheless a great software program worth reviewing. It has the usual Nirsoft look and feel around and comes with the usual set of features like portability and command line parameters.The program comes as a tiny 37 Kilobyte executable that can be run from anywhere. The programs and locations that can be cleaned up are sorted in categories (Windows Explorer, Windows – General, Windows – Advanced, Internet Explorer, Other Microsoft Applications, Mozilla Firefox, Opera). Each category contains several listings each with its own checkbox so that it is possible to clean a complete category or only selected items within.

Selecting an entry in the main window will display a short description and its path on the computer system with the additional option to open it right away.

The cleaning log will display every item that gets cleaned by the user which can be quite a lot depending in the settings. One interesting option for cautious users is the cleaning report view which will display exactly what Clean After Me will be doing if the user selects to clean the selected items.

A few advanced options are provided that can be used to zero files before deleting them to make it harder for anyone to recover them.

Clean After Me is an excellent software program which is a viable alternative for CCleaner.

The registry cleaner tool will scan the Windows registry for various invalid entries. Each entry is shown after the scan with the possibility to clean it up. By default a backup of the Registry will be created before any cleaning takes place. It is furthermore possible to schedule regular Registry cleanups or restore a previously created Registry backup.

The disk cleaner is a basic tool that will scan the hard drives of the computer for temporary or duplicate entries giving the user the options to delete those files from the disk. It is nowhere as extensive as tools like CCleaner offer but it covers the most widely used temporary locations.

The disk cleanup utility can be scheduled like the Registry cleaner can. Filters can be added to include or exclude certain file types from the scans. The privacy cleaner option can be used to remove several privacy related entries from the operating system. Other tools that are provided by Comodo System Cleaner are a disk wiper, a tool to calculate file crc and extensive system settings that match most Windows tweakers out there.

Comodo System Cleaner combines several important system utilities in one application. Users who are looking for tools to cleanup temporary data are currently better of with tools like CCleaner who have the advantage that they can be further customized by the user which Comodo System Cleaner cannot.

BTF Sniffer is at its core a software to display usage traces left by a user on a computer system. Unlike other tools of its kind it displays the traces that it found in its interface. The interface itself is divided into two panes: The left pane displays various types of traces, for instance Microsoft Windows, Internet and Communication or Security and Control. The right pane will display all traces of the specified category. It is important to note that traces will only be displayed for subcategories (that is always the last entry in the tree structure).

What makes BTF Sniffer special are the manipulation options. Single entries can be executed, copied, sorted, exported or deleted by right-clicking an entry. It can currently discover more than 1270 traces left by 370 software programs. Besides the obvious Microsoft Windows traces it can for example detect traces from Sysinternal software, ftp applications, web browsers and document viewers.

The software is portable which means it can be downloaded and run after unpacking it to the computer system. The major problem that English users could run into are the category descriptions but it is usually possible to identify what a category does by looking at the traces in the right pane.

Two functions need explaining. A click on Bearbeiten (Edit) in the top menu will reveal options to clear all categories (Alle Listen löschen) or only selected categories (Ausgewählte Listen Löschen). Reports can be created by clicking on Datei (File) in the top menu and selecting Vollständigen Report erstellen (Export all items in a text document) or Report erstellen (Auswahl) which means to export only the selected items.

Single traces can be manipulated and exported with a right-click. There are additional features but they are not necessary to run the program. If you have any questions about usage let us know and we provide the answers.

CCleaner is also the requirement obviously for anyone who wants to use Click&Clean since it won’t do anything if CCleaner is not installed on the computer system. Besides placing a link in the Quick Launch Bar Click&Clean adds buttons to the web browsers Internet Explorer and Firefox which can also be used to quickly clean the system using CCleaner.

The advantage of using Click&Clean is minimal and probably only useful for optimizers and users who run CCleaner several times during a session and do not want to click more than once. Everyone else is better off using CCleaner independently.

These files can be deleted manually as well but this usually puts the effort and time solely on the user. A third possibility would be to run Atomic Cleaner which comes with a mode to clean game leftovers from a computer system.

Atomic Cleaner looks like the usual system cleaners. It can not only clean game leftovers but provides access to a temporary files and Internet cleaner as well. It offers four buttons to start the three different cleanups and one that will initiate a full system cleanup.

The user can initiate to clean the system immediately by selecting any of the four main buttons or take a look in the advanced menu. The advanced menu provides options to scan the system without removing the data immediately. Atomic Cleaner displays a table after the scan that displays the space that the user could free if he would delete the temporary data on the computer system.

The advanced menu contains the option to add additional locations that should be cleaned up regularly. This is an interesting option for users who run applications that use their own temporary folders to create files on a computer system. The only option that is missing completely is one to perform Registry cleanups.

The software iSysCleaner Pro is a new contender and although it is called Pro it is completely free to download and use. It comes with the usual ability to clean temporary data from various applications and the operating system with a concentration on Windows, other Microsoft applications like Microsoft Outlook or Microsoft Office and Internet applications like Firefox and Flock.

A comparison of the default scans had the result that iSysCleaner Pro found roughly 120 Megabytes of additional data that could be removed than CCleaner did. The main difference seems to be that iSysCleaner Pro is cleaning installation files while CCleaner does not. The installers for Quicktime and iTunes for instance that are stored in the iTunes directory would be cleaned by iSysCleaner Pro which attributes to about 55 Megabytes of data.

Both applications provide the option to clean the prefetch folder shows that myths are hard to come by. Cleaning that folder degrades system performance for a while until Windows creates the prefetch files anew. The software is constantly being updated and an alternative to CCleaner.

The program’s main interface provides easy access to several check-boxes divided into categories like Windows Explorer, Firefox, Windows General and Windows Advanced. It is possible to check each category which would have the effect that every item under that category would be cleaned or to check individual items instead.

The software concentrates on traces that a user leaves on a system and provides cleanup routines to delete those traces in the Registry, in logs and temporary files on the host system.

After selecting the items that should be removed from the system the user can either clean the items directly by clicking on the button Clean Selected Items or create a report of the items that will be deleted first. This report appears in the status pane of the software.

Clean After Me is compatible to Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003 and Windows Vista.

This week saw a lot of updates and it was quite hard to pick one that would receive the update of the week award. Since the Open Office update has not been made official yet on their homepage I’m giving the award to Orbit Downloader which is in my opinion the best free downloader out there.

If you know of an application that has been updated but is missing in the list let me know, I will surely do my best to monitor it from now on and add it to the list.

µTorrent 1.8 Build 9137 Beta – a new Beta version of this lightweight Bittorrent client.

7-Zip 4.58 Alpha 5 – another popular archiver with support for many different zip extensions.

aTuner 1.9.82.17453 – a tiny tool that can change several settings of Ati and Nvidia video cards.

BitComet 20080320 Beta – a fast Bittorrent client.

CCleaner 2.06.567 – cleans the computer from temporary and other unnecessary files.

Cobian Backup 9.1.1.166 Beta – an excellent backup software with options to backup to an ftp server.

CodecInstaller 2.9.1 – analyzes multimedia files and displays information about the codecs that are needed to play them.

doPDF 6.0.257 – sets up a virtual printer that creates pdf documents.

DVDFab HD Decrypter 4.1.2.0 – copy DVDs to your hard drive and remove protections – if any – in the process.

FeedDemon 2.6.1.0 Beta – a desktop feed reader.

K-Lite Mega Codec Pack 3.8.5 – a highly popular codec package.

Locate 3.1.8.3260 Beta – Locate offers one of the fastest ways to search for files and content in files in Windows.

MediaCoder 0.6.1.4077 – a batch transcoder for audio and video files.

MediaMonkey 3.0.3.1147 Beta 3 – music organizer, manager and player.

Nokia PC Suite 6.86 Release 6 – applications to transfer to and backup data from your Nokia mobile phone.

ooVoo 1.5.1.96 Beta – offers multi-user video chat.

Norton Removal Tool 2008.0.3.15 – Some call it the best software Norton ever produced. Use this if you want to completely remove a Norton / Symantec product from your computer.

Open Office 2.4.0 – the final version of Open Office 2.4 after several release candidates. A popular replacement for Microsoft Office.

Orbit Downloader 2.6.4 – a fantastic download manager with many advanced features.

PeaZip 2.0 – an alternative to the more popular packers like Winzip and Winrar.

Recuva 1.12.291 – recover accidentally deleted files on your computer.

Songbird 0.5 RC2 – a multi-platform multimedia player.

SpeedFan 4.34 Beta 44 – manage the speed of the fans in your computer.

SUMo 1.7.0.42 Beta – Sumo scans your computer for known applications and checks their version against an online database to let you know if the computer is having the latest version installed.

Vista Codec Package 4.6.2 – add several missing video and audio codecs to Windows Vista at once.

WildBit Viewer 5.2 Alpha 4.0 – another update of this popular image viewer.

WinSCP 4.1 Beta – I’m almost exclusively using WinSCP to update my websites.

All you need to do is download the new ini file called winapp2.zip from the CCleaner forums, unpack it and extract it into the CCleaner directory. It will overwrite the old ini file. The old file has a size of 40K while the new one one of 60K, that should give you a rough idea on how many new applications are added by using it.

The Beginners guide contains an extensive chapter that explains how you can add your own ini entries to CCleaner to extend the functionality even further. It does not sound to complicated at first glance but you need some basic understanding of Windows, the Registry and file parameters.

Unfortunately though it is only running on the account of the user that is currently logged in. There is however a way to run CCleaner automatically on all system accounts. This tip is actually right from the CCleaner Beginners Help File which is the only place that I know of that mentions command line parameters of the software.

The command ccleaner.exe /AUTO autostarts CCleaner in the background, runs the cleanup process and closes the application afterwards. The only thing left to do is to incorporate this command in the Autostart group of all users that have an account on the system.

Open the folder C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Start Menu\Programs\Startup in Windows Explorer, right-click in that folder and select New > Shortcut from the menu. Now paste the command “C:\Program Files\CCleaner\ccleaner.exe” /AUTO into the first field. Make sure the path is correct. If you have installed CCleaner in another directory you need to use the correct path you have installed it to.

Whenever a user logs into Windows CCleaner will be autostarted and perform the cleanup process.

It is for instance possible to get a visual analysis of the fragmentation level of a folder or file. While it is nice to know it would not make much sense if the software would not take advantage of this feature. Defraggler makes it possible to just defrag a folder or file instead of defragmenting the complete drive.

This is of course considerably faster than defragmenting the whole hard drive and useful if you want to work with a certain application. As far as I can tell it is not faster or slower than any of the other defragmentation tools out there but as I said, the new feature makes it stick out from the rest.

Read More:

Defraggler

Processes such as scanning and cleaning were optimized as well. I’m not that convinced that the procedure is that faster but it surely is fast enough even if you decide to clean a lot of files.

Let me explain what CCleaner does if you have never heard about this software before. CCleaner is a software that cleans traces on your computer. It is able to clean cookies in various browsers, website histories, urls, recent documents and several more all with the click of a button.

Next to removing traces of various programs and system activity CCleaner is able to scan and repair the registry as well and delete the information using secure file deletion processes.

I like the fact that it is possible to use CCleaner from an USB stick which means that you can take it with you and execute the software whenever you are finished working on a public computer.

Next in line is a new version of CCleaner which supports not Microsoft Vista. It received some bug fixes and several routines have been optimized. CCleaner makes it pretty easy to delete all those temporary files and traces that many applications seem to create. Delete internet cache, history, cookies and much more with the click of the mouse button.

Vlite is a very interesting application for Windows Vista. It lets you uninstall components of Windows Vista that can’t be uninstalled by default resulting in a smaller and faster system. You can also create a image file of Windows Vista with removed components which is helpful when you reinstall the operating system.

Well those have been the most interesting ones. If you think something is missing from this small list let me know.

A new version was released yesterday which added support for Open Office and Nero Burning Rom Cleaning, this is a great tool, make sure you try it out.

Cleans:

* Internet Explorer Cache, History, Cookies, Index.dat.
* Recycle Bin, Temporary files and Log files.
* Recently opened URLs and files.
* Third-party application temp files and recent file lists (MRUs). Including: Firefox, Opera, Media Player, eMule, Kazaa, Google Toolbar, Netscape, Office XP, Nero, Adobe Acrobat, WinRAR, WinAce, WinZip and more…
* Advanced Registry scanner and cleaner to remove unused and old entries. Including File Extensions, ActiveX Controls, ClassIDs, ProgIDs, Uninstallers, Shared DLLs, Fonts, Help Files, Application Paths, Icons, Invalid Shortcuts and more… Backup for registry clean.
* Windows Startup tool.

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