So what can you do with D7? The feature set ranges from running maintenance related tasks over tweaks and PC repairs to malware scanning and offline tools.

When you start D7 for the first time you are presented with the program options, before you can access the main interface. An info screen is displayed in the first tab that displays different information about the operating system, from the data of installation to the user path, hardware related information and whether UAC is enabled or not. Alerts on the right highlight areas of improvements.

All tools are listed on the remaining tabs, from left to right: Maintenance, Repair, Tweaks, Malware and Offline Tools.

D7 offers two modes of operation. You can either start a section in auto mode which will run through all suggested features and programs, or execute a program or feature individually.

The maintenance tab makes use of one of the best features of the application; Integration of popular third party tools. When you look closely you can see that the maintenance module can integrate CCleaner, Defraggler, StartupLite, Recuva and Custom applications in the maintenance run.

You need to download those applications manually and put them into the 3rd Party Tools subdirectory of the program directory before you can use them. Instructions on how to do that are available on the developer website.

Repair offers lots of tasks. From examining the Windows hosts file and resetting the firewall over fixing PIO mode to Windows Updates and repairing system restore. There is a lot to select from, this time without an option to run all tools at once. But it makes sense here to make the user pick individual repairs only.

The Tweak’s tab offers the usual assortment of tweaks, nothing spectacular but still useful for some users who may want to disable some features in Windows.

It gets interesting again on the Malware tab. Here you can perform standard malware related tasks, like purging the Windows System Restore, fixing the shell and run dialog, repairing permissions or networking settings. Several popular malware scanners, like Malwarebytes, Kaspersky’s TDSS Killer or SuperAntiSpyware can be integrated into the tool to scan the system thoroughly.

The custom apps section offers integration of custom third party applications, like virus scanners that have no individual listing in the application.

You need to make sure that the programs are either in the D7 directory or installed properly on the system before they can be utilized in the malware scan and removal. Here is a video of the malware module in action.

If you thought that’s all what D7 has to offer then you thought wrong. Icons at the top right lead to additional menus with options. Here is a screenshot of the Internet button. Remember, that’s only one out of nine available buttons.

It offers several interesting features; From downloading the latest video drivers over testing Flash, SSL or Siliverlight to downloading Microsoft’s Security Essentials and running Windows Update. Other buttons lead to a list of system tools, important folders on the system, user related features like changing the password or configuring UAC to finding specific terms in the program. The search terms are highlighted in the application interface, helpful if you are looking for a tool to fix a specific error or problem.

D7 is a great addition for a maintenance, troubleshooting and repair tool collection. The option to integrate powerful third party is a great feature. New users will have to spend some time in the interface before they can use the full potential of the application.

The program can be downloaded from the developer website. You find instructions there as well which you should read to make the most out of the application. The program is compatible with 32-bit and 64-bit editions of Windows. It was tested on a 64-bit edition of Windows 7 Professional.

The software displays a welcome screen on first run where the user can enable or disable scheduled automatic system maintenances and automatic updates.

Argente Utilities contains a one-click maintenance mode which basically runs several of the tools included in the application without user interaction. A summary of all discovered errors and problems is available for analysis, impatient users can click on the Repair all problems button right away to resolve all issues directly (not recommended).

The application creates backups of the Registry automatically. It furthermore creates backups whenever a module is run or a setting changed so that it is always possible to restore the system.

The following modules are included in the application:

• Registry Cleaner – Scans the Windows Registry for errors, excess entries and other problems and offers to correct them.
• Disk Cleaner – Scans the hard drive for temporary files and invalid shortcuts.
• Privacy Cleaner, Scans for privacy related data and information, for instance recent documents, browser history, caches and application specific information.

• Uninstall Manager – Like Revo Uninstaller. Runs the built-in application uninstaller first and offers to scan the system for leftovers in the second step. A right-click on an entry can be used to search for the application online.
• Startup Manager – Lists all programs that are started during system startup. Entries can be removed with a click. Additional options available to edit the listing, add new programs, open the containing folder or run an application.
• Process Manager – Displays the running processes, options to kill processes and to open the containing folder.
• System Optimizer – Can change several system settings at once. It will disable services that are not needed for instance and apply other tweaks to the system. The user has to configure the options on first run to avoid that services get disabled that are needed.

• Spyware Cleaner – scans the system for spyware in cookies, files, folders and Registry.
• Spyware Immunize – Immunizes the system from many potential spyware threats.
• System Manager – Was not available at the time of testing.
• System Repair – Repair several common Windows errors

Argente Utilities offers several interesting features and modules to maintain, repair, secure and optimize the Windows operating system. The software is provided as a portable and setup version. It is compatible with all 32-bit and 64-bit versions and editions of the operating system from Windows 2000 to Windows 7.

The results are empty folders, and invalid program shortcuts in the start menu. Only users of advanced uninstallers, like Revo Uninstaller, do not have to cope with those problems, as their programs scan and delete leftovers after uninstallations.

It is quite possible to clean the start menu manually, but then again, one purpose of a computer is to make life easier for the user.

Start Menu Cleaner is a small portable software for Windows that can scan the Windows start menu for empty folders and broken shortcuts.

start menu cleaner

All options are presented to the user in the main interface. The application by default detects and deletes empty folders, and invalid program shortcuts, as long as they are not pointing to removable or network drives.

All deletions need to be confirmed before they are executed. Adventurous users may disable that confirmation to speed up the process.

clean start menu

Folders and shortcuts that are deleted are gone for good, unless the option to delete them to the recycle bin is enabled in the options.

Start Menu Cleaner is an effective lightweight program to remove invalid entries from the start menu. It is compatible with 32-bit and 64-bit editions of Windows, and available for download at the developer website.

1. If you never empty it, it grows and wastes valuable disk space
2. If you empty it frequently, you lose its buffer benefits for recovery. Plus, who likes frequently doing this highly manual task?
3. Finally, if like me, you get bored by this nonsense, you end up permanently bypassing the trash (with systematic Shift+Delete instead of Delete), which is of course very dangerous

Linux users, rejoice! Enter Autotrash. The name may sound a little scary, but this tiny command-line Python application is actually very friendly and fully solves the problems I just exposed. Its humble task is to selectively purge your trash based on certain criteria that you specify, like Deletion date, Remaining disk space, or Regular expressions.

Edit 2010/04/14: Windows users, Martin found a great app for you, read his followup article.

For example, you can tell Autotrash to delete files that have been in the trash for more than 7 days ago, and to ensure that at least 10GB remain available:

This means our three problems are solved:

1. The trash never gets too big
2. It always contains a reasonable recent backlog of deleted items, ready for the occasional recovery
3. Geeks like me can come back to sane Delete practices

The next question you’ll probably ask is: “Great, but I don’t want to have to run Autotrash manually, how do I setup a schedule?”. In typical GNU style, Autotrash doesn’t do that, and it’s okay because it’s not its job. To do the scheduling, I suggest that:

• Either you setup a cron task running every n hours
• Or, if you are as lazy as I am, you can simply add Autotrash to the Startup programs:
  
  In my case, I generally shut down my computer for the night, so launching Autotrash at startup is a satisfying “good enough” tradeoff.

The most straightforward way to install Autotrash on an Ubuntu machine is to use its PPA. Inside a terminal, enter:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:bneijt/ppa && sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install autotrash

Once the installation is done, open the manual page to see what it can do, and do your own setup:
man autotrash

Autotrash is free software licensed under the GPLv3, currently available as source or Ubuntu PPA. Special thanks to nekohayo who made me discover it.

Ronan is a geek and musician living in Montreal. He enjoys days when his hard drive doesn’t evaporate because of an accidental keystroke and rambles about software, music and life at flying molehill.

Depending on your computer setup and usage you might want to run the schedule less often, maybe once a month or every other week instead. The applications that I’m using are: Autoruns, Process Explorer, CurrPorts, MyUninstaller, Eraser, Disk Cleaner and Defraggler.

If you want to add more security to the schedule you could add an anti-virus application and one against spyware to the mix and run them as well. I usually do not do this however. The schedule is selected for the greatest efficiency. I begin by analyzing the current situation, remove programs and files that I no longer need in the second step, defragment the hard drives and finally erase the free space on the drives so that these deleted files can’t be recovered anymore.

The Schedule:

• Autoruns
• CurrPorts
• Process Explorer
• MyUninstaller
• Disk Cleaner
• Defraggler
• Eraser

Autoruns:

I’m using Autoruns to check the startup items of my operating systems. It happens more than once that applications automatically add themselves to the autostart without me noticing it immediately. The check usually does not take longer than a few seconds. I disable any new entry and lookup entries that I do not know about.

CurrPorts:

CurrPorts is a small application that displays the currently open ports on your system. If I spot something suspicious here I look it up at a search engine. You can basically see which programs have currently an Internet connection.

Process Explorer:

I check the currently running processes and services with Process Explorer. If I spot anything that is currently running that should not I investigate it. It if should not be running I try to configure the application that way or remove the application if I do not need it at all.

MyUninstaller:

I tend to install many programs throughout the week to test them before I write an article about them. Instead of uninstalling those applications right away I do that during my weekly schedule instead.

My Uninstaller has the advantage that it can remove multiple applications at once. It is much faster than the Microsoft build in uninstaller as well.

Disk Cleaner:

Disk Cleaner is like CCleaner. It removes temporary files, caches, urls and histories from your system. Those files are only temporarily needed and have to go once a week. Most of my applications are configured to keep those information only for the session. (Like Firefox for instance)

Defraggler:

Now that all the temporary and no longer needed files are removed I can start the defragmentation process. This usually takes a bit longer because of my two hard drives. An alternative to Defraggler is the excellent Disk Defrag from Auslogics.

Defragmenting the disks speeds up my system and prepares the hard drives for the next program that I’m going to use: Eraser.

Eraser:

Now that all files are in place I can use Eraser to overwrite the free space of my hard drives so that recovery programs like Recuva can no longer recover files that I have deleted before.

Do you run a similar schedule ? Am I missing a program or application that I should add to the schedule, 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.

Crap Cleaner Freeware

CCleaner is a freeware tool that optimizes system performance and maintains privacy. It clears browsing history in all browsers applications and cleans disk space in the Windows System, Windows Explorer, Internet Explorer and some more specific advanced options. The default settings are good enough. It is probably not a good idea to select the advanced options unless you know exactly what you are doing. CCleaner performs the functions of Disk Cleanup and much more. Privacy is maintained and hard disk space is cleaned to free-up memory. It doesn’t stop there. CCleaner also features an efficient Registry cleaner which supports registry backups. This is useful if you need to reverse the registry cleaning in the event that an important registry key was deleted in the process, but this usually does not happen.

CCleaner is an all-in one program including tools to uninstall programs, customize the startup menu, manage System Restore and also has a great Drive Wiper feature so you don’t have to spend $50 on some fancy “Disk killer” software. The GUI is very easy to operate and, best of all, it is fast. The only feature that tends to take a long time is the Drive Wiper, depending on how many passes you select.

There are three versions of CCleaner and only one of them is free. The major difference is that the free version does not include support. Honestly, you don’t really need the support. Just download it and start using it. The features are self-explanatory. Download the free version directly from the Piriform site. There is no malware or spyware to worry about. Here is the link.

The download is fast and simple and the program opens right away.

The details of your operating system and computer will be listed at the top of the interface, just below the CCleaner version name. If the program is updated or a new version is available, you will be alerted to the fact upon opening it and there is no need to uninstall the old version when a new one is available.

The basic “Cleaner” will clear out temporary files, browsing history, etc. You can easily customize what will be cleaned by using the check boxes. To initiate, click the Analyze button and this will produce a list of all the “clutter” then you click the Run Cleaner button to clean.

The Registry cleaner operates in a similar fashion. Scan for Issues then “Fix Selected Issues”. You are offered the option to backup the registry before fixing. The Tools are again simple to understand and use. Select the tool(s) that you want to use and click the buttons below to execute.

Finally, the Options involve specific settings for CCleaner such as exclusions, inclusions, general settings and advanced settings. You can also set the cookies that you want to keep and the ones you don’t.

This is an excellent tool to have on your desktop or toolbar. Use it at least weekly and enjoy better performance and security at no expense.