All-In-One Tune UP vs individual freeware

[Sillyperson]

Hi... here is a question...

I got Advanced System Care Pro from Iobit....

would you use that for everything, or speciality products like:

Erunt & Easy Clean for registry...
The full iobit smart defrag stand alone...
Some other spyware immuniser (is this needed if you have resident SAS)...
CCcleaner for Junk Files
Drivermax for driver update
Foxtune instead of the tune firefox feature
Clean mem instead of Smart Ram feature
Another spyware remover
Another security analyser...
Another system optimiser....?????


Obviously, an all in one is quick and easy, and can be automated.
But does it do the job as well as other apps?

Your thoughts please

Bingoogle, wala, willa, qoooo.... Silly Person

[JonathanT]

Personally I prefer individual utilities, outlined here.

[MidnightCowboy]

System "tweaking" is as infectious as swine flu - and often about as much use.

From my experience many of the people using these tools;
a) haven't a clue what they are actually trying to achieve by using them and b) are incapable of demonstrating if anything has been achieved (i.e. they see no difference afterwards).

There are exceptions of course and keeping your disk tidy and temporary junk under control does have benefits. For this I would use either Smart Defrag for an automated solution or Auslogics say once a month manually.

http[COLON]//www[DOT]iobit[DOT]com/iobitsmartdefrag.html
http://www.auslogics.com/disk-defrag

Others will have their own favorites which I'm sure are equally as good.

Empty Temp Folders is a safe way to deal with these, and if you can't resist the temptation to mess with the registry then Easy Cleaner is the safest option here.

http://www.softpedia.com/get/Securit...-Folders.shtml
http://majorgeeks.com/EasyCleaner_d414.html

From the evidence I've seen, unless you have well above average system knowledge anything with "system care" attached to it sooner or later results in your needing a "system cure" to fix whatever it is it's "achieved" for you

[J_L]

It doesn't really matter to me, I use both, as long as they're top-class.

[kendall]

One little known secret for emptying temporary files is as follows:

Click on Start, and then Run.
Type %temp% (exactly as written. percent sign, temp, percent sign)
Click ok or run

What should show up is a list of all your current temporary files. I do this weekly. I then delete everything that is usually over 3 days old.

Another area for finding normally a lot of temporary files is C:\windows\temp. I usually try to check out this folder weekly as well.

Of course, you can run CCleaner or run the Disk Cleanup tool in Windows XP or other similar utilities as well. However, even after running these tools, I've found temporary files via both processes I've identified above.

P.S. A little side story--I get to my mother's house maybe once per year. While there, I try to do some annual computer-cleaning. I did the %temp% thing on her computer and found over 2000 temporary files that took up over 1 GB of space; most of which were well over 6 months old.

[peter]

but I think Kendall's neat trick produces different results in Vista, and should PERHAPS be labelled for XP only.
But I'm not sure.

[kendall]

Great point Peter! I've never used Vista, so I have no clue what this does or would do in Vista. It is clearly a Windows XP "trick".....

My apologies for not making that clear.

Works fine in Vista 64 and Windows 7 x64

[peter]

I would never quarrel with a moderator, and i don't deny it returns a result, I'm just a little hesitant at advising users to delete "all those files". I suspect you are an expert user & also adopt "safe working practices". But some don't have any safety net. I think its a "First do no harm" sorta thing.

[Sillyperson]

Some say that cleaning registry has no discernable impact on performance?

What do you guys and gals think?