Subject of Review: CCleaner
Version Reviewed: 3.14.1616 (64bit)
Greetings everybody. As this will be the first fully fledged article, let it be a review of a fine piece of software. There is a lot of PC cleaning utilities, some of them are buggy, some of them are cleaning more than needed making the system unstable and some of them are just spyware crap. We’re going to review an application that has a reputation of a long living and peaceful utility for your PC maintenance. It is CCleaner developed by Piriform.
This program claims to make your PC more reliable and clean all the dirt your PC gathers during the months of usage, including temporary files, cache, cookies and different log files. The second main feature thing it has is the registry cleaning feature.
After you have installed the program and launched it the following window will appear:
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| CCleaner - main menu |
Note of interest: The first stable version of the application came out on the 8 of July, 2008. Its name was intended to be “Crap Cleaner” and that’s why it was called “CCleaner”.
As one can see, the interface is pretty simple and it is obvious what every button does. In the top of the window the utility shows the main basics of your PC including the OS version, CPU, GPU and the amount of RAM.
The main features of this small application are:
1.Cleaning junk files. The “Cleaner” button will lead you directly to the junk cleaning process:
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| "CCleaner" button |
2. Cleaning the Windows Registry – is another aim of this application. It will allow you to choose what junk keys in the registry to search for. As in the previous operation the program has its default setting for a such cleaning job. By default all of the options are on but in the case you need to exclude something you can tick the following options off.
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| "Registry" button |
When everything’s been set it’s time to click the “Scan for issues” button. After the scan has been comleted you’ll be able to watch the keys program will be able to fix. After that you should click the “Fix selected issues” button. A registry backup will be offered to be made. It’s better to do a reserve copy of the registry in case something goes wrong, so you’ll be able to revert the process. After the backup has been made a new windows shall appear. There you ll be able to fix the issues one-by-one or repair them all with the one click, do as it suits you.
That’s all of the main features, but there are more additional ones.
After you’ve clicked the “Tools Button you’ll be dragged to the following window:
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| Uninstall manager |
The first additional feature CCleaner has to offer is the Uninstall Manager. It is much alike to the one of Microsoft Windows, though it has a faster startup speed and minor other features, like the ability to rename entries to your needs, remove the fault ones or save them all or separately to a txt file extension.
The second helpful feature is the Startup adjustment. It’s useful optimization feature that allows you to disable or even delete startup keys that you may consider obsolete so the normal OS boot up process will be less hampered . Also there is a tab which allows you to edit Internet Explorer plugins and extensions. In some the keys withint this tab affect more then only IE, cause there may be some extensions which affect on the system overall. For example the Java plugin. Disabling it in this section will cause the disability in other browsers as well. You’d better know what’re doing. Save to txt feature is present here as well.
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| Startup manager |
The third program’s ability is the system restore tab. In this section you’ll be able to manage your system restore points. You’d be able to see how many of them were created, their description and creation date.
Also you’ll be able to remove them.
Note of interest: In the upper corner of the accompanied window you’ll see “Manage all of your System Restore points (The latest one is disabled for the system safety)”. A small amount of users know that the latest restore point is disabled by default and in case something goes wrong the system will restore itself from the previous point thus leaving the last one unaltered.
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| System Restore management |
Drive Wiper is the fourth and the last useful ability CCleaner has to offer and it allows you to format any of your drives. It may perform a free space format (it allows you to be sure your deleted data is unrecoverable) and a full drive formatting. In both cases you’re able to select the amount of cycles the formatting process will be used. The more cycles selected – the least chances to recover your deleted data. If you have some crucial or private information you want to get rid of you’ll find this option pretty useful. Advanced overwrite method (2 cycles) – is the least adviced method in the cases like this. More cycles just will spend more of your time. You should use them in the case you’re a spy or a billionaire that keeps all of his personal login accounts on a PC (as txt files :D ).
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| Drive Wiper |
The last avaiable button is called “Options”. There are ways to alter th application’s language, the way CCleaner starts with windows, perform its cleaning job and updates and shuts itself etc.. Must say there is lot of languages available including Farsi, Azeri, Catalan, Marathi and others. As a rule with each update program keep increasing its amount of languages. There is also a possibility to exclude cookies and folders from the analyzing process.
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| Options |
Notice of Interest: CCleaner can be installed without any user interruptions - just insert the /S parameter to its installation file, so it must be something like this: "ccsetup314.exe /S" and then the application will perform a silent installation. Ccleaner can be run silently as well, all you need to do is to run the application's desktop icon with the /AUTO parameter. Clip the desktop icon and go the the properties and in the target line add after the brackets /AUTO. So it will look something like: "C:\Program Files\CCleaner\CCleaner64.exe" /AUTO.". Click apply and you are ready to go. By the way adding the /SHUTDOWN parameter instead of /AUTO will make the application to perform all the cleaning process and turn your computer off. I find it quite useful.
Okay, now as the program capabilities have been described it’s high time to do some testing. There is one thing I should add before we proceed to the test process. Despite the users views the current status of CCleaner is not as freeware as it used to be. There are several shareware editions of this application now available:
1.The Common CCleaner as the largest amount of users know it. IT’s free, it’s basic and, despit some recently added features, it’s pretty much the same as it was since 2008.
2.The Business Edition (34.95$). The features are exactly the same despites the premium (as its called on the home website) support this edition goes along with.
3.CCleaner Network. Consists of two subeditions: The Network Edition (10 licences – 199$) and The Network Edition Professional (10 licenses - 249$). The coolest edition. The minimum avaiable amount of licences the user of this edition can buy is ten workstations (PCs). It combines ultimate cleaning possibilities depicted in the previous edition however in the professional version there is another Piriform application included – "The Defraggler" which in its basic version is free as well. But those two little fellas work with a network, so this edition makes it possible to perform cleaning and defragmentation on all PCs within the network. The ultimate thing which will help your Enterprise (do you have any? : D) to spare its administrators a lot of maintenance time.
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| Pic of the Netword Edition of CCleaner. Taken from the home site. |
Ok, let’s get back to the testing procedure. The specifications of the testing machine you can see in pics in the top of this article. In case someone forgot or to lazy to go back, here they are:
CPU
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CPU Intel Core2 Quad Q9550
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GPU
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ASUS GeForce 8800 GT 512mb
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RAM
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4gb DDR2
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OS
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Windows 7 Ultimate 64
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OK, the first thing we should do is measure the overall boot time. The estimation is finished when the windows arrow stays still and there are no any loading circles and the desktop is steady and ready.
Before the CCleaner: 1 minute 47 seconds.
As you can see the result is pretty f..well it ain’t good. The startup is overloaded with a lot of programs and Skype itself eats a lot of boot time as well, besides the testing PC haven’t seen any cleaning procedures in a month or so.
Ok, so now we use the CCleaner two main things: we’ll clean the temporary files and the registry using the default settings and see what we will be able to achieve.
After the CCleaner: 1 minute 55 seconds.
Strange results, I didn't expect this. Maybe it’s because I used special delay startup options which this program doesn’t cover. However I felt more instant responsiveness just after the OS had booted, a placebo perhaps? Anyway CCleaner managed to clean the 1 252 mb of junk files! However it found just a few dozens of registry errors. Strangely enough, I still have a positive view of this program.
Notice of interest: There is an unofficial utility which drastically expands the possibilities of CCleaner by adding to its support a lot of additional programs, so there must be more junk files cleaned and registry keys fixed. It’s called “CCEnhacer”. The Piriform has nothing to do with it, so users should try it with the awareness of possible risk. Here is app’s website: http://singularlabs.com/software/ccenhancer/.
Well, one may ask what conclusion should be made out all of this? The application is tiny, good and efficient and definitly worth using it to keep your PC clean. It’s advised to run this utility at least once per two weeks, once a week will be most perfect though.
Who may find it useful: everyday users, maybe inexperienced ones who want to take care about their PCs and keep their money for a good use. PC administrators thinking about the ways to save some time at their work can be counted in as well (network editions only).
Who may find it obsolete: those geeks struggling to clean as much as possible, when they are in such struggle to clean all unneeded files that are willing to take risks. Experienced tweakers are not needed to use this app as well cause they have other - more advanced applications at hand.
RATING: GOOD
I have this program installed both on my computer and laptop and it's very useful. It keeps my devices clean and I don't have any kind of problems with them, fortunately :D I must admit that a friend who's a tech support specialist told me about this great little program.
ReplyDeleteFree, user-friendly and safe to use. That's exactly what an everyday PC user requires. However there are a lot of similar and more advanced shareware programs available on the software market besides CCleaner, but to my opinion this one little fella beats them on their field with its simplicity and PC safety. :)
ReplyDeleteThnx for providing this information on the internet.
ReplyDeleteHere is my blog post :: IT Network Support Sydney