FileCleaner: real-time temporary file cleaning software

Martin Brinkmann
Jul 17, 2013
Software
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10

When it comes to deleting temporary files on Windows, CCleaner is the go-to tool for many. The program's main features are that it is dead easy to use, extendable and highly customizable.

What it does not offer is the scheduling of tasks, and real-time monitoring of temporary files on the system. And that is exactly what FileCleaner adds to the table.

It offers the usual cleaning options that you expect from a program in the vertical, but it is less extendable as CCleaner in this regard.

The installation should not pose any issues, but you need to pay attention to it as it includes an offer to install a backup program - unrelated to the cleaning software - on your system as well. So, make sure you decline that offer when its page comes up to avoid that it gets installed on your system.

The interface itself displays all available tools on the left side, and the actual findings on the right. You can hit the analyze all button right away to run them all one after the other, or pick a utility from the menu and run it independently from the rest.

File Cleaning Tools

Here is a quick overview of the tools it makes available:

Browsers: Supports Opera, Internet Explorer, Firefox and Google Chrome. It analyzes the browsing history, cookies, typed urls, preferences, the cache and other data and displays its findings in a report afterwards. You can select to analyze and clean only some data sets, e.g. the cache, or all.

One interesting feature here is that you can display all images found stored by the selected browsers and browse them all at once on the system.

browse cached images

There is also a sites and documents filter that will only display document file types including text and html. Each item links either to the local hard drive or a web address.

While you can sort items by type, name or access date, you cannot make use of a search as there is none.

Toolbars or Plug-ins: This lists all the toolbars and plug-ins (read browser extensions) installed in various browsers that you have installed on your system. The tool picks up extensions as well apparently, which feels kinda strange. You can remove any item listed here however directly. Note that it seems to ignore Firefox, or at least the Nightly version of the browser that I'm running.

Applications: Lists common programs installed on user systems with options to remove their temporary data from the PC. You can again browse images or documents once the report has been generated. Supports programs such as uTorrent, 7-Zip, Flash Player, Steam, Skype or AIMP.

Windows: Analyzes several locations that Windows uses to store temporary data. This includes the Recycle Bin, memory dumps, various history databases, recent documents or Regedit.

Real-time Cleaner: The cleaner supports the four browsers mentioned above, Live Messenger and Skype. It runs all the time in the background so that data gets removed from the system in regular intervals and not only when you run the software. For that, you need to keep FileCleaner running in the background.

Shredder, Registry Cleaner and Registry Backup: Three system tools to delete files permanently, remove invalid or corrupt entries from the Registry, and create a backup of the Registry.

Clean ups can also be scheduled in the program with a click on settings.  You can run the program daily, weekly or monthly to delete temporary files automatically.

Here you also find out that Registry backups are created automatically by the application.

Verdict

Real-time cleaning and scheduling are two features that may appeal to some users, especially since CCleaner is not supporting them.  The program lacks customization options on the other hand, as you cannot add other programs or locations to the clean up process.

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Comments

  1. Doc said on July 20, 2013 at 7:30 am
    Reply

    Martin, I beat my BitDefender into submission and dl’d File Cleaner. Noticable difference in speed of browsing.

    I also wrote to BitDefender to correct their impression of filecleaner.com. Again, vielen Dank!

  2. Mike said on July 20, 2013 at 5:31 am
    Reply

    Hallo Martin,
    hast du schon einmal von dem Programm PrivaZer gehört ? Ich benütze es schon sehr lange und bin zufrieden mit seiner Gesamtleistung. Ich füge dir mal den Link ein damit du es dir angucken kannst. Es würde mich interessieren, wie du es im vergleich mit dem CCleaner bewertest.

    http://www.privazer.com

    Mike

    1. Martin Brinkmann said on July 20, 2013 at 5:48 am
      Reply

      Mike, habe ich schon 2x reviewed hier. Definitiv eine gute CCleaner Alternative.

      https://www.ghacks.net/2013/06/12/privazer-1-12-released-another-look-at-the-system-cleaner/

  3. Doc said on July 19, 2013 at 9:29 am
    Reply

    Martin, Thanks so much for all you do.

    I was unpleasantly surprised when navigating to the files.com/features link. WOT warned of really poor site ratings, and then to my surprise, BitDefender blocked my navigation to the website as well.

    Any ideas?

    1. Martin Brinkmann said on July 19, 2013 at 10:42 am
      Reply

      Web of Trust is entirely community driven, which means that you may end up with bad reviews because competitors ran a campaign against your site, or because disgruntled users did, or users who do not understand the service.

      I’m not saying this is the case here, but after one of my sites got flagged for nonsense, I’m not very fond of WOT anymore.

  4. Jacques said on July 18, 2013 at 11:36 pm
    Reply

    Hey Martin
    Love your blog, I read it everyday.
    Tried this program and it deleted my MS outlook data folder. For what it is worth I found the junk cleaner in Revo uninstaller to work great, on different machines it has cleaned up to 3 Gigs coming from Win SxS folder

    1. Martin Brinkmann said on July 19, 2013 at 2:47 am
      Reply

      I’m sorry to hear that, this should not have happened.

  5. James Yambra said on July 18, 2013 at 2:38 pm
    Reply

    Just an FYI… I went to the FileCleaner website and WOT popped up its warning. I checked the feedback and found that there was only one negative rating/comment. As I commented on WOT, I downloaded FileCleaner from this website, scanned it with VirusTotal and the software came up clean. The FileCleaner program performed as promised on my computer with no ill effect. The website did not negatively affect my computer in any way. I’m not sure what the person that left the rating and comment experienced but. This website has a B- rating with the BBB NOT an F!

  6. rickxs said on July 17, 2013 at 7:24 pm
    Reply

    Registration to Pro is necessary for use of the Reg Cleaner — there is an option to install ”Mypcbackup”, BUT it is unticked by default [when going though the install process] sorta glad I installed under Timefreeze

  7. rickxs said on July 17, 2013 at 6:59 pm
    Reply

    .Net framework 4 is required,— which I do not normally run

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