Tools for cleaning and speeding up Windows
The speed question of operating system will be asked forever, no matter how powerful your computer is. Despite of that we can try to make it run faster and, what more, by not paying a single cent.
Right at the beginning I’m warning you: you are using all programs mentioned below on your own risk! These applications will help you to clean your computer and speed it up, but when you don’t know what you are actually doing, stop before you make your system unstable, or worse, unbootable.
Windows slows down in time mostly due to fragmentation of files on harddrive (one file is stored in multiple fragments all around the harddrive which creates delays accessing it), unneeded applications starting immediately after system boots up (for example Adobe’s Reader) and mess in Windows registry (for example when uninstalled applications don’t remove their registry records and/or registry files get fragmented). In this article we will have a look at solutions for all of these problems in defragmentation, registry cleaning and defragmentation and startup tweaking programs.
CCleaner
Starting with all-in-one cleaning solution, Piriform’s CCleaner is one of the best software you can install on your computer. It is completely free, multilingual, provides complete cleaning of your system including internet applications and registry. Also you can find handy tools to uninstalling programs, restore your system and turn off or on certain applications at the startup, which will make your system ready faster.
CCleaner is very easy to use, basically everything is just matter of 1 or 2 clicks. Although it is very versatile, it can’t do defragmentation of your harddrive, nor system registry. Nevertheless, you definitely need one – download it now!
AutoRuns
Moving to application speeding up the start up and tweaking the system, AutoRuns is provided directly by Microsoft. It offers waste amount of settings that can scare user-beginner but you can still easily tweak startup by switching to “Logon” tab and ticking off or on different applications to be run when Windows starts. That way you can re-enable application you turned off accidentally before.
Great function of AutoRuns is also “Search Online…” that you can use to find more information about the process. Download AutoRuns from Microsoft website.
Auslogics Registry Cleaner
Registry Cleaner is just single-purpose application to clean registry with easy-to-use interface and possibility of choosing from quick or advanced scan. As it is specialized just to repair registry, you can consider it better than CCleaner for this job.
After cleaning your registry Auslogics Registry Cleaner will display also percentage of performance gain. If you’re looking for easy to use and good registry repair utility, you can try downloading Auslogics Registry Cleaner.
Glary Registry Repair
Another simple but powerful registry repair application is Registry Repair from Glarysoft. I prefer Auslogics’ one but it doesn’t really matters which one you choose as both are really good. Download Glary Registry Repair.
Quicksys RegDefrag
I found out that not just cleaning registry will boost the performance of your system, but more importantly registry defragmentation. Like any other file on harddrive also file (or files) containing Windows registry can be fragmented. Therefor it is very important to get rid of this fragmentation and allow Windows to work with registry more effectively.
It’s very difficult to find free registry defragmenting software, but I’ve done search for you and found this incredible little application, RegDefrag. Plus for this app – you don’t even need to install it when using portable version. Download it from Quicksys website.
Auslogics Disk Defrag
Disk Defrag from Auslogics is one of the fastest defragmenting tools I’ve ever seen. Multilingual, but Slovak or Czech language are missing. Offers also disk optimization, defragging single file or folder and scheduling defragmentation task.
Unfortunately I am not sure whether it defragments also Windows’ virtual memory paging file, but doubt it, as I’ve seen this function only in pay-for software. Download Auslogics defragmentation tool from their website (portable version available too). Interestingly, Auslogics offer screen saver version of their defragmentation tool called Disk Defrag Screen Saver.
Quicksys Disk Defrag
Another very good and neat application from Quicksys with the same name as previous defragging tool Disk Defrag. Still in beta version but looks very promising and I didn’t have any problems with it yet. Paging file defragmentation remains a question to me also for this program.
I’m sure you will be amazed about how easy it is to use and how beautiful the user interface is. Otherwise it offers the same functionality as Auslogics defragmenter (except specific file and folder defragmentation) and is also available in portable version. Download Quicksys Disk Defrag.
At the end, it’s up to you which one of these applications will you use but definitely I recommend installing at least CCleaner and one of defragmentation tools as Windows’ defragmenter is just not capable enough. Also use these apps regularly, lets say every 2 weeks.
See you around next time!
Tip: You can boost the performance of your Windows and save some more space on harddrive by setting up the size of virtual memory – paging file. Tutorial on how to do this in next article.
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