Computer cleaners have debuted right along with personal computers. They are known for causing all kinds of damage to your files, Operating System (OS), and registry; as long as they’re not an outright virus. I’ve even heard that they occasionally help clean up your computer.
I’ll be comparing five different cleaners with the following requirements:
- Easy to use
- Can’t (easily) cause damage to my computer
- Have visible results
- Aren’t trial-ware or virus-laden (uploaded to and tested with VirusTotal)
- Don’t install toolbars or adware
All of the programs were installed, and I then rebooted my computer, and ran an analysis on each program, so that I wouldn’t have one of them clean up before another.
As for the actual products, here they are:
IObit Advanced SystemCare has both a free and a Pro version where you have to pay $19.95. Whenever I visit a website, I glance at the WOT, and I must admit that, although IObit is a legitimate company, I was afraid to try it because the Web of Trust (WOT) icon for it was bright orange. The reviews stated that IObit had a good Privacy and Child Safety rating, but that the Trustworthiness and Vendor Reliability were in doubt (because of bad applications), which goes along with the accusations that IObit has engaged in copyright infringement with Malwarebytes. Still, I downloaded the program and tested it, to mixed results.
The scan felt just a little too slow, but was by no means something that would make you go get coffee or check your email, still, it could have been faster.
The registry cleaner gave me 125 problems, mostly unused file extensions along with uninstallers. The problem is, it showed several entries which are associated with programs and files that are installed and used.
The Privacy sweep did a great job of finding Internet Explorer history (IE) files, and even dug into my Firefox profiles to remove cookies and trackers.
The junk files cleaner did a similarly good job, returning unwanted and unused files.
Running the “Diagnose System” yielded 11 “System Optimization” and 9593 “Security Defense” issues. Basically, it said I had a ton of un-immunized problems in IE, cookies that could track me, and that it wanted to tweak IE so that it wouldn’t pick them up in the first place. I realize that this preventive measure could be useful, but any antivirus/firewall suite will detect these things, and most sites won’t carry these hijackers and trojans anyway (assuming you don’t roam the scary parts of the internet).
The problem is, it did a good job while I was using the free version; running the Pro version wanted to delete .chm files, which are Windows Help Files, along with similar entries. While it is true that these files aren’t really needed, the thought of not being able to hit F1 to bring up a help dialog was unnerving.
Overall, the cleaner was effective in finding things to get rid of, but seemed a little too aggressive, and posed the issue of deleting something you might not want to. While this is naturally an issue with any cleaner, this program just seemed too aggressive for my taste.
PC Fixer garnered a clean WOT rating, although it had one hit on Comodo antivirus, according to VirusTotal; however this was out of 41 antivirus programs, so it was most likely a false positive.
The interface was old school, but I have played around with enough programs to know that appearance really isn’t everything. The scan completed quickly, but this was likely due to the fact that it only cleans up your registry. This scan was even more aggressive than the IObit scan, giving me 905 hits. The only other things it scanned for were IE files and startup items.
This program was quickly going to my Recycle Bin when it gave me some reasons to pause. Along with the questionable cleanup tools was a “Checkup” utility. This actually gave some helpful tips such as my having turned off Firefox dialogs and the like. For the average user, these might actually be useful, although I wouldn’t see myself installing the whole program just for this feature.
The program as a whole seemed to have good ideas, but simply didn’t offer anything that I could see myself, or anyone else using.
CCleaner and nCleaner both got good WOT reviews, and scored 0 hits on VirusTotal.
CCleaner is a popular, widely known application. Scanning isn’t the fastest thing I’ve seen, but it doesn’t lag either. CCleaner is definitely the most conservative of all the cleaners, which I find the best feature. Honestly, deleting files, while definitely improving system performance and freeing up space, is also not a critical thing to do. Hard drive space is cheap, so only deleting things that are sure to not cause problems gives you the benefit of cleaning up unwanted garbage, while being sure that, even if there is some leftover garbage on your computer, you won’t destabilize your system either.
The registry cleaner is similar, only getting rid of items that are clearly no longer being used.
It’s easy to use, and an average user should have no problem relying on the program to make all the right choices.
Finally, I tested nCleaner, which is supposed to be CCleaner on steroids. Scanning was the longest of all, which could probably give you time to at least check your inbox in the meantime.
It prompted me to delete .log and .tmp files, which is all well and good, but it doesn’t clean up any Windows, program, or internet browser files. The registry scan was the opposite, returning 466 entries, many of which seemed to be in use.
The program could be a boon to anyone looking to replace CCleaner, but I would check each entry before deletion.
The worst of the bunch would have to be PC Fixer, with IObit’s Advanced SystemCare following close (altough the Pro version of IObit’s Advanced SystemCare is worse than any of these), while nCleaner and CCleaner were better. Overall, I wouldn’t mind using any of the cleaners; however, I will definitely be using CCleaner. It is the least aggressive of the bunch, which has it’s pros and cons. Yes, it may very well leave some leftovers behind, but I can be sure that it won’t make my computer unusable.
There is a lot of hype on cleaners in general and registry cleaners in particular. However, a computer references the registry once – during startup. The rest of the time it’s on, there is no need to reference the registry. This means that you could have a sizeable amount of “garbage” in your registry, but this would only add a minuscule amount of time to your startup as it’s being read. Trading even a few less seconds from startup for the exponential increase in danger you run from deleting a crucial entry just isn’t worth it.
CCleaner [Piriform]
IObit Advanced SystemCare [IObit]
nCleaner [nkProds]
PC Fixer [digital support]
I have used CCleaner for the last six years and never had a problem. It is not worth it to me to use nCleaner when it is not offering something significantly better.