PC Cleanup

Bill Arnold

1974
Staff member
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8,622
Location
Thomasville, GA
No, not a politically correct cleanup! :rolleyes: Personal computer cleanup products is the subject of my post. I've run a sample of a couple of different products: AVG PC Cleanup and PC Cleaner Pro - sample versions of both. What is the consensus of the group? Are products like this worth the cost? If so, which do you recommend?

Thanks in advance!
 
Are you having an issue other than just being slow?

I can't recommend any since I haven't used them. I typically have my data on an external drive somewhere and just wipe the computer and reload it from time to time (every couple of years if it lasts that long).

If you're having malware issues, I typically use malwarebytes.org software (free version) and it does a good job of getting the pop-ups and stuff that you sometimes dont' know is running off the computer.
 
For general clean-up 'System Mechanics Professional' {link} does just about anything I/you need, besides anti-virus/firewall stuff, it allows you to > Optimize the start-up, registry, etc...Remove junk files...defrag the RAM, drive{s} & registry...back-up the registry...repair broken shortcuts, hard drive problems...& lots more...been a lifesaver for me & my 11 yr old system:eek:...I too, keep most everything on an external drive and use it{SM} there as well...
 
Are you having an issue other than just being slow? ...

I see some slowing down at times, but nothing drastic. The main thing I've seen is the report from the cleanup programs showing tens of thousands of things that need to be "fixed". I'm sure some of it is temporary files, etc.

For a couple of years, I've used a 1TB WD "My Book" running off my office PC. If I connect it to a USB port on my wireless router, will that make it more secure? I'm leery of using one of the online backup services.
 
Could always give one of the ones above a try and see if it helps. reloading or upgrading is always an alternative or doing manual un-installs of apps you don't use. My wife's got so slow from all the things in her startup it would take about 10 minutes before you could bring up a browser window.

There are a few build in ways to see what things are running. You can go to the search or command line and type in "msconfig" and hit enter to see what things are running in your startup. You can uncheck some of them (on the startup tab) to see if it makes a difference. The first tab will change from normal to selective startup whenever you uncheck something, just select normal again to set it back to the original config. Don't do a "Uncheck All" on the services tab though, did that once and drove me nuts for days getting things going again thinking I had gotten a virus as nothing worked.

I have a couple of usb WD drives I sync for backups and keep one unplugged, also have the data on a server as well as using dropbox for the files I use between the house and shop (drawings and such).
 
darren, can i have one of those external hard drives in a network and have all three machine get backed as it needs to be done either scheduled or automatically?
 
You'll need to setup the external drive as a share on one of your PC's, under the drive create a folder for each pc.

For xp, use these steps to setup the backup: http://www.technologynext.org/set-up-automatic-backup-in-windows-xp/

It's backup isn't as comprehensive as the Windows 7 as they did some enhancements, but can at least get your data files backed up there. Windows 7 will also get some of your preferences and such automatically.

For windows 7: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/Set-up-or-change-automatic-backup-settings

Windows 7's backup automatically creates the folder for the pc, but not going to hurt anything if it's under a folder you created either.

The pc's have to be awake and running for the backups to run. Also if the external drive is running an encryption program, it may need to be disable for the backups to work correctly, will have to test with it to see.

If you haven't tried dropbox, you should give it a try or at least putting your drawings and less sensitive data in to share between your shop and house. It does a great job of keeping things in sync. I actually use it for the photobooth biz. My templates get setup and stored there when I'm designing them on my laptop, then each booth has dropbox and I can simply point to the folder with the templates for setting them up for events. Another one I use is box.com, seems to works just as well, but like the app features of dropbox a little better.
 
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