Discussion on:

Five tools to keep Windows systems in top shape

I use both the Defraggler and the Auslogic Defragger.

Very dangerous. Often contains a Trojan!

ccleaner

When TuneUp Utilities can do all and more...

If this is your selection of tune up utilities apps to keep a system running good your wasting your time try iolo system mechanic, Tune up utilities pro you cant get any better than them. Ccleaner is always loaded with a virus or backdoor trojan.

Do you work for iolo?

I've been using CCleaner for years and never had any trouble with it. I love it and recommend it to colleagues here.
Recently I stumbled upon Belarc and i'm pretty happy about the tool.

I agree. Belarc is a great tool... and it's free.

loaded with virus or Trojan ? prove it because I've used it back in beta stage & no problems

Nothing to see here folks, move along now....

Otherwise, all these 1 job tools are a pain to utilize when there's TuneUp Utilities out there for a decent price of $17

Why do I keep falling for these? Nothing new here. TR, I'm getting ready to drop you from my reading list if you can't come up with some better information.

I feel the same way, TR needs to improve or loose readers. I expect more!

Nothing new here.
Mem Test
CCleaner
HDD Scan
DeFraggler
Belarc Advisor

Windows does and has done a fine job of keeping its registry in proper functioning order since 2000/XP. There is negligible impact on performance of a Windows machine which has an untouched registry. If anything, you run the risk of causing problems. This is PC Repair 101 information and I would have expected someone introducing CCleaner to have stated such...

CCLeaner hasn't been that great for years
try slim cleaner

The information in this could have been presented in a single paragraph. It seems Tech Republic generates nothing but fluff these days. If this is the best they can do, it's time to shut the site down and stop filling our inboxes with tripe.

You must have needed to fill a big hole in the Daily Digest in a hurry to use this "article".

I tend to agree with the others somewhat in that this was a waste of my time, and nothing but a rehash of facts that have been stated so many times. Why not put it right up front that its a "review of some tools that may help" or something to that effect.

My BIGGEST COMPLAINT is that you people continue to force us to have to click through multiple screens to get minimal input. These articles, in this format, are completely akin to the "crapware" that the computer manufacturers include on a new computer.

I won't say that they are completely useless because they aren't.

HOWEVER, I will say that this format that you force upon us is wearing really thin and I too am considering to just give up my membership and find another tech site that I can enjoy the articles on once again. This crap format is going to lose you many members if you continually force feed it to us at every opportunity.

Nuff said, I just hopes this sinks in with your editors.

Sometimes it's nice to be reminded of tools that may have been laid aside. I had forgotten about good ol' Belarc when I upgraded from XP to Win 7.

and yes, I mean this sucks

Really, do you hate us?

I agree. Making readers click through 10 pages in order to build a higher page click stat may be doing you more harm than good. I can promise you, it is losing you more readers than the clicks are worth.

If you don't like the quality of the material just unsubscribe but you don't have to get nasty about it.

I think the complaints are more about the format of the presentation. The whole slide show thing is very time consuming. Ironic that something like this comes from a site that has "tech" in it.

Month after month I find that the page transitions are slow. Consistently, annoyingly slow and not what I experience in general on most other web sites.
And that's with Adblock Plus preventing a blizzard of ads that frequently change from page to page.

home users need 'window cleaning tools"

Win2k pro, XP pro, vista business + up, win7 pro + up can all be set up to be self cleaning, through group policy settings (which isn't available to home users)

as such I have a 9 year old XP Pro OEM install that started off life with SP1 and went through the SP2 and SP3 upgrades as well
it's still on the original 120GB Seagate hdd and it hasn't slowed down,

and I also have a pair of 6 year old XP Pro custom installs that aren't showing any slowing either

> store no document / program / browser history
> disable recent docs, etc.
> store no user files anywhere on C:\ install another HDD or use partition
> disable the indexing service delete the catalog and unindex all NTFS partitions
> disable personalized menus
> disable "user tracking"
etc.
and the system is self cleaning

there is a whole host of performance enhancing policies that strip out the dead weight and go a long way to making a system more robust and longer lasting

for disk testing, I use the free testing tools from the individual HDD mfg. when possible:
WD DLG, for western digital disks
SeaTools, for seagate / maxtor disks
etc.

also, good anti-whatever scans can help point you in the right direction for detecting whether a slowdown is caused by critter-ware,
or if you should be looking at the software, drivers, recent updates, or hardware as the cause

I always use Belarc on all my systems - not least for its ability to track registrations, updates and identify hardware.
Unfortunately none of the other applications offer much beyond Windows own tools.
I expect more from contributors to Tech Republic and suspect that this item is only here to attract new registrations by insulting the intelligence of us all.

The best bar none
CC Cleaner-free
Steven Goulds Clean-up 4.0-free
PC medic or win-ASO-share
Search & Destroy Spy-Bot-Free
Avast ot AVG -Still-free
The rest high cost is good for inept I.T.'ers that don't kbnow squat about the real ways of cleaning & patching to keep the "Almighty" Microsoft" systams running lol , as Hackers Dream of getting into

I like the list, since I already use most of these. Most of these are available as stand alone or portable versions that can be run from a flash drive.

The one I would add would be DiskMax from KoshyJohn.com, to clean out cache files, logs etc. Recommend using together with CCleaner to clean your system properly.

I'm using windows and ubuntu in one computer and the ubintu won't start now. What could be the reason and how to solve this?

posted in the "Question and Answer" section of the forum. Not here.

That said, I find your post particularly indicative of the milestone advances made in Linux and its installation.

I agree wholeheartedly with the commenters who complain about the need to keep clicking through these articles. Being forced to do that means I read a lot fewer of them. But for me the article has some value. I learnt of at least one tool I wasnt aware of, was reminded of another I'd forgotten about but most of all I get to read comments on them from other readers.

I agree with several others, waste of time reading this article ( as most of Tech Republic's emails have become) this is nothing but the same ol' same ol' stuff. Hell my 10 year old son knows about all of these programs from a long time ago.
Matter of fact, I'm thru with ya TR, I have several other sources to get the latest tech stuff from, I'm unsubscribing from your mailing list and flagging you as Junk Mail.

Zzz-z-z-z-z-z

and there is no blog version ...
so I'll move on to something else.

Spare me the slide shows and videos. Can't anyone just write anymore?

That's it I've had enough. TR you're dropped.
You ARE the weakest link.

I used to use Belarc until I came across PSI it not only tells you if your software is up to date it actually helps you keep it up to date by running scheduled scans and scoring your overall system.

Four items in this email did not work or did not work intuitively. Even the help submittion failed! I too am thinking about leaving.

In this order, Combofix, Glary Utilities, Ccleaner, Advanced System Care, SmartDefrag. Turn off unnecessary services in msconfig.

Once again, "well done" zombies!
Just keep up this style and you will soon see the hits falling to zero

Surely a simple list would have taken up five lines ? There's nothing new here at all !!

If you want to avoid the hassle of the all the page loads to go through the slide show, just go to the blog. The link is labelled "check out this entry in our Five Apps blog", there you can read it all on one page.

TR is lost

Try Major Geeks

To click thru all the links, icons and ...... wait for it....WHATEVER!
I find it a real pain in all articles in this format.

Change to something a user may like, not what some web designer thought was all so ZOOMY!!!!!!!

It's widely known CCCleaner makes you feel better but doesn't improve performance. And Belarc Advisor doesn't even fit your criteria in the title of the article.

More useful: MalwareBytes. This thing finds malware the big commercial stuff doesn't find. How about giving them their props?

hi - are there links to get these tools?? such as the defragger? or HDD scan
tks
Jon

Going through all these clicks is just wrong. And sometimes when clicking to get to some info or downloads, it's not even there, just ads. If this keeps up I am gone because this is a waste of my time. I set aside certain times of the day just to browse articles and things like this is just a complete waste. Now, is anybody really listening.

I like some of these but how or where do you access them to download for a try?

I never throw my 2 cents in however, I agree with the earlier comments. This may affect your readers who are looking for articles that are meaningful and have content. The format in which we have to click through an article is absurd. You need to listen to your audience or you will lose them. But then again, you probably don't care because you are getting the "clicks" for some sort of quota.

And one more piece of advice... people in our community talk.

I agree with rwbyshe@. I skip almost all of your articles because I just don't have the time to wade through pretty front end window dressing to find content. You can certainly keep your current format but you should add a short paragraph up front containing the "meat" of the article along with any relevant links along with a link to your current format. I

Friends no harm done in reiterating what had been said earlier, just in case it had been forgotten, but frankly attimes its annoying to surf through the pages to see a content repeated with a different heading. Editors, i think you need to consider you inputs. We still love Tech republic...

Waste no more time - This article was a FAIL

really worthless

Defragmentation is completely outdated. New HD technology makes this useless. Forget it.

Why not listing the best tools? There are better tools out there for these functions.