Subscribe to our Best Free PC Tune-up Utility
|
In a Hurry?
|
 Go straight to the Quick Selection Guide |
|
Introduction
|
|
I will start with a caution. These programs no matter how good they are may sometimes cause harm to your computer. With the steps below however you can avoid most problems very easily. Tune-up utilities are just as necessary as getting a car serviced. They keep your computer running fast and error-free. There are a variety of tasks tune-up programs can do, such as cleaning temp files, incorrect registry entries, even ensuring your privacy. There are two scenarios that stand out where these type of programs will shine. The first example being an older computer that has been running for a longer time and needs all the resources it can get. The second is computers who run resource intensive programs, such as cutting edge computer games or video processing. All-in-one tune-up suites are more convenient than using several individual products, but the downsides are if you are unfamiliar with all the different tools you may use some above your knowledge level.Something to keep in mind as well is some stand-alone freeware are more effective than the all in one options. Before you start with tune-up programs there is a couple things you should always do. Most of these apply as a general rule of thumb of working with computers but I just want to make sure we are all on the same page.
|
|
Discussion
|
|
My current top choice is Ashampoo WinOptimizer 5, from Chip Online. (Thanks to For Free On Internet for the information.) WinOptimizer has a very sleek interface, with one-click cleaning for disk, privacy and registry cleaning tasks. It also has a nice option of a full scan, which gives recommendations for disabling unnecessary services, tweaking system settings, as well as the one-click cleaning features. I also like "Did you know?" tips, some of which I found quite useful. However, WinOptimizer is the only product that requires registration. Also, no further updates are provided. However, this is the best choice if you want something simple that can clean your computer with a few clicks, with no ads. WinOptimizer offers a very basic disk and privacy cleaner; in particular, it does not clean the history of most programs. The disk defragmenter is very fast, but seems to be a bit too quick to offer good file placement. The file erasing utility is very comprehensive, with wiping options up to Gutmann and the ability to rename the files and folders before it is erased. The registry cleaner also seems very basic, detecting very little items. (Of course, registry cleaning is not simply a case of the more the better, but the result was far less than even some very conservative registry cleaners). It also has a tweaking utility with over 450 tweaks, and it's the best I've seen out of these products. WinOptimizer also has a detailed process manager, a startup manager, a system information utility, a benchmarking utility and various other tools.
Another good option is Glary Utilities. It has one-click cleaning for some tasks. One important feature that Glary does not have is disk defragmentation. This is quite a powerful product, but many of its tools require user interaction. Glary Utilities free offers a very basic disk cleaner, but it is made up by a reasonable privacy cleaner and various tools which can remove broken shortcuts, duplicate files and empty folders. Unfortunately, I could not find an option to overwrite files in the privacy cleaner. The disk-space analysis feature is outstanding, offering the most detailed information out of these products. However, I was unable to find out what encryption algorithm Glary uses for its encryption/decryption utility, so I would not rely on it for sensitive data. Glary also contains a file and free space eraser and recovery of deleted files. The registry cleaner works very well and it also contains a registry defragmenter. The startup manager is the only product to contain a startup delayer, however, the security ratings from both the startup and process manager do not seem to be very accurate, but it could be useful for experienced users. Glary also includes a few other tools.
The disk and privacy cleaner is very thorough, but could be dangerous in the hands of a beginner. System Cleaner has a wide variety of file utilities, with encryption/decryption, a rename tool and calculation of checksums, to name a few. The registry cleaning is very aggressive, maybe too aggressive in my opinion. Other features include a minimal disk-space analysis feature, a detailed process manager, a startup manager, a rather basic tweaking utility and system information and benchmarking. Regardless of which tune-up utility you use, I suggest you read Gizmo's Best Free Disk De-fragmenter and run one of those defragmenters regularly. The reason for this is that I believe none of the disk defragmenters provided by these suites are that effective or have scheduling/real-time options. If you use a disk defragmenter in conjunction with one of these tune-up utilities, you'll have a remarkably complete tune-up package. Remember that cleaning your PC always involves a small element of risk, so backup your data, create a System Restore Point and have an image backup handy before you start. I recommend that you run the tune-up programs monthly. After each monthly Windows update is an excellent time to run a clean up. If you install and uninstall many products, you may want to increase this frequency to weekly or even daily. If you have never tuned up your PC, then you should see a real improvement in speed and responsiveness the first time you run these programs. However, on subsequent runs the improvement may be much less noticeable. Please help us by rating this review |
|
|||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||
5.11 
Private Freeware (not free for commercial use) 
2000 - Vista
Portable version available 
Delicious
Digg
StumbleUpon
Please rate this article
I received the information below in our site contact form. -Gizmo
I thought you might like have some "New" News to tell your readers.
I have created an interacting program to skin Advanced SystemCare, with
their approval of-course, it's called XSkin. The website is ClickTask.com
and more information may be found in the IObit.com Forums under my sticky
"Designing New Skins for ASC". These forums are part of the support center
for ASC.
Thanks again... I am going back to read some more info on your site.
Robert M
Valuater
I use Auslogics Boostspeed, it has good utils for maintaining windows clean and fast.
its not "freeware"
Hello JonathanT and folks. I believe Comodo System Cleaner is out of Beta now and has been fully released to the public. Were you going to re-evaluate this and perhaps add it to your list if it meets the standards?
Duskao
Thanks for the info. I will add it to the list soon.
....sorry - forgot to mention Easy Cleaner for the rest of my clean up utilities. Find CCCleaner too aggressive unless I know I'm concentrating which after a hard day staring at several screens is not always guaranteed! So, Easy Cleaner - good, safe, reliable, user friendly (forgiving!) and trouble free!.
I too was a big fan of all things Iobit until they ditched AWC for ASC. It's caused problems already on one of my PC's and I dislike the route that this company is now taking towards intensified commercialism. If you don't want to give away stuff free then fine I appreciate that, but if you DO then please dont fill the applications with 'phone home'facilities disguised as "updaters". Smart defrag remains the better of their products but even this will connect all the time unless you disable the option. I'm afraid that I've lost faith now totally and I've switched to a combination of Auslogics, Erunt and NTRegopt for the registry and Auslogics again for my disks. They maybe somewhat simpler apps but I've never seen a bad word written about Auslogics anywhere.
I installed Glary Utilities Pro version from www.giveawayoftheday.com.
There seems to be a problem with its wipe free space file shredder utility. It caused my hard drive to overheat to 60 degrees Celsius (should be no more then 48degrees) it also did not complete the process seeming to stop at about 45percent. I let it cool down to 35degrees and tried again stopping it at 14percent complete when it got to 50degrees.
I think this utility could damage your harddrive!
Laurie
I totally agree. It wiped some executable files when I ran the file shredder utility. My computer hasn't been the same since. I would stay away from this entirely.
Tune Up Utilities is the best!
From freewares CCleaner is the king.
An excellent cleaner program that hasn’t been mentioned here is Eusing Free Registry Cleaner:
http://www.eusing.com/free_registry_cleaner/registry_cleaner.htm
I’ve been using it for some time, and it has never yet given me a bad advice.
See:
http://www.techsupportalert.com/best-free-registry-cleaner.htm
I tried ashampoo win optimizer and it seemed to improve things.I turned off my computer and come back a few hours later and got the blue screen of death.It said bad pool or something like that.I booted up in safe mode and did a restore wich lost the optimizer thank goodness.I also tried that glary utilities one and after that finished I could not get back on line and also did a restore.I will stick with cc cleaner and auslogics defrag,never had problems with these and they are free.
I'm sorry i don't know whats wrong with everyone,ASC is superb I think the problem is the drivers! (as in the user)
well I know I've had problems but yesterday they dropped a major update (just incase you haven't seen it yet) which fixes alot and now I'm back to using it over Glary.
- Shane -
http://4Einc.co.cc
CCleaner cleans your hard drive, fixes the registry, manages startups, and has an uninstaller ... add in Defraggler by the same company and your in business. ... piriform.com, i think. all free, simple, and no b.s. :)
CCleaner is mentioned here: http://www.techsupportalert.com/best-free-file-cleaner.htm
And Defraggler here: http://www.techsupportalert.com/best-free-disk-de-fragmenter.htm
I've been trialling ASC and Glary, and later found my disk imaging software (Terabyte Unlimited's BootitNG) couldn't see the image files on my external hard drive. The Terabyte knowledgebase pointed me in the right direction: something had changed a registry entry to disable the DOS 8.3 name reference on NTFS partitions. The 8.3 names are used by BootitNG which runs outside Windows. I suspect ASC as it has an optimising function Glary does not have, but I can't prove this.
So be careful with these utilities if you are or might ever likely to use another program running outside Windows.
And by the way, the new interface for ASC is a real shocker - confusing, illogical, cluttered.
Glenn
Hi Jonathan
I came across the following site, offering a
free 6 month license of Advanced System Care (Pro version)
http://www.raymond.cc/blog/archives/2008/12/08/free-iobit-advanced-syste...
There is definitely something wrong with ASC. My system is running worse and slower over time. Have you thoroughly tested this product? I have been testing it as the versions have been upgraded and have chosen to remove it from my system. I am surpsised that it is the top pick here.
I have also tried the Ashampoo products and have to agree with another user. It is not a good program and creates problems. Looks like Glary may be the best option, however some of the functions did not work in the version I tried.
If it doesn't run well on your system, then of course you should use another product. However, I'm running it on two computers with no noticeable problems so far. I haven't heard of anyone else with slowdowns either.
Well all three of these programs have a major deficiency, but I believe ASC is currently the best choice overall.
Hi Jonathan,
I appreciate the comment and respect your opinion. I read through the comments and many users are having issues. With me it was not just a slowdown but problems with some programs. I have also noticed that on some of the versions I tested, the restore did not work. I did not notice any probems at first but they occured after a few weeks of use. If the users who had the positive experiences wrote updates to thier positive comments I wonder what the opinion would be? We are at the mercy of the program writers. When programs are installed on our systems how can you even know what they are doing and what changes are being made by them? Can true testing really be done asside from seeing how a machine operates after a programs use?
Hi
Thanks.
I only saw one other user with problems and the problem was different to yours, I'm not sure about "many users"?
what people should keep in mind is the fact that you SHOULD NOT run Glary & ASC on the same machine, as they tend to conflict with one another as according to MajorGeeks.com they say you should only need one on your system.
Is there a link to this information?
Thanks
sorry bout the slowness:
http://majorgeeks.com/page.php?id=20#allinone
theres the whole ordeal where MG says you should only have one...
As for the guy who posted above stating how his system has gotten slower overtime, here's the thing as it does happen... both me and my wife have the same stuff on our computer (except for games as I have more on mine) but for registry an stuff like that it's all the same we both have ASC on each and I find her computer running slow, real slow...
I am tempted at switching up to Glary to try that out some to see if we'd gain back some speed and all since as of last I checked if you goto MajorGeeks site (majorgeeks.com) and check out the hottest downloads they have Glary is #1 as ASC has been pushed to #3 which it usually is #1 but I guess it's affectin so many computers in bad ways people are going elsewhere... Not to mention that I know if you uninstall SmartDefrag of IObits through Revo you'll loose alot of stuff which keeps me from using that (I know diff article) but perhaps Glary should be pushed to #1 for a few months Jonathan as it's clear that ASC needs some more work to be done on it before many users use it, although the old version is still being updated (Ver 2) (http://www.majorgeeks.com/Advanced_WindowsCare_v2_Personal_d4991.html)
I know Imma see if that makes much diff on my own computer before I start tossin that on the wifes computer...
- Shane -
http://4Einc.co.cc
I totally agree, Glary is the best option.
I've given it some thought, and I think Glary should be second place, since WinOptimizer does not have updates.
Is it possible to have the browser go to a new tab or window when the user clicks on a link in a reply or post?
The link for the majorgeeks download of ASC is bad. Just FYI!
http://www.techsupportalert.com/www.majorgeeks.com/download5927.html
Thanks, it's fixed now.
Try:
http://www.majorgeeks.com/download5927.html
IOBit has trailpay which makes their full version of ASC free. Sign up for emusic or somethign you might really be interested in, then cancel it within the alloted time frame. I will have to try it. I'll let you all know if it's a scam or not. Sounds good though - $30 product for free just to try someone's product or service. Car buying should be so easy :)
Avanced windows care was my fav, but it has ruined two pcs now! Both lost their system files so they wouldnt boot, had to repair with windows disc, very annoying, and I paid for the pro version! Back to Glary for me as well
Advanced windows care,Tried it. Found 20 registry problems and fixed them
But then I get the folling message 444 registry problems 210 privacy problems if I BUY the pro system it will fix all problems and my PC will run 400% faster.
WHAT A LOAD OF RUBBISH.
Gordon
Funny thing ... I may have just gone thru the same thing.
I do find ASC very useful and would not like to think it is not living up to my expectations.
It is quite easy for me to re-install Vista on my T9300 laptop. I will try it again just to be sure ... and let you all know.
Such things has never happened to me with ASC.. something else might have caused the problem.. are you very sure?
What about PC Health Optimizor Free Edition? Any good?
I did not like it as it's restricted product, and didn't have any particularly good features.
Hi Jonathan - Terrific page mate....well done. Just one thing, you list a 64bit version available for Advanced SystemCare....the download page on the publisher's site states 'Vista 32bit'....there is no mention of a 64bit version.
That aside, I am impressed with Advanced SystemCare, it's a great improvement over the old Advanced Windows Care.
keep up the good work mate,
JIM
Thanks very much! I've removed the 64 bit version information. Yes, I agree ASC has improved a lot.
I really like your new layout and ratings of the freeware. Great addition in my opinion.
Duskao
Thanks, credits go to George and his team for the new layout.
Hello Jonathan T.
I just found a new beta "Tune Up" type utility that I have not yet tried out because I do not have a test system other then my every day computer I use at home. As I mentioned it is still in beta and I'm sure still have a lot of kinks to work out, but it is by a good company in my opinion and I figure it might be worth keeping an eye on like many of it's other products. It's Comodo System Cleaner. Here is a download for those of whome would like to try it out, I'm going to wait till I hear something back from you guys with test systems. In case you missed it the first two times I said it, it's in BETA, so BEWARE! :P
http://forums.comodo.com/diskregistryprivacy_cleaner_and_total_system_ut...
The download links are found on the forum page I referred to.
Thanks for the information.
So, have you tried it yet? Any word on it?
Well, there's no one-click cleaning, but you can schedule it to run some of the tasks automatically. There's a tweaking utility and a few file tools. The registry cleaner and disk cleaning seem to be very powerful, but maybe too aggressive. But it doesn't have disk defrag or registry defrag.
Overall it seems like a nice option, especially since it's only Release Candidate, but I personally prefer ASC. It seems to be on par with GU and AWO. I'll include it in the review once it is released as a stable product (ie not Release Candidate).
understandibly. Thanks for the info!
Glad to be of help.
I agree with your top pick,thanks for your review of this page.
Trevor