Cleaning software?

[Xenixlor]

I wasn't sure if this is the right forum to post on but any help for a noob like myself would be greatly appreciated...

I'm a casual gamer and play on a 3ish-year-old rig now. Since I only take the time to research hardware when I'm getting ready for a new build, I can't quite remember the processor except that it's intel i5/i7 (I'm not home now but can check later). It's using a radeon IceQ 7950. I don't play intensive games - mostly just LoL, Civ V, and Skyrim on occasion. For three different iterations now, I've generally replaced my rig every 3-4 years, which is around the time that I notice performance starting to get sluggish. Not game performance sluggish, but just multitasking Windows programs, AVG, adobe programs, the Steam app, etc. I know that this is a direct result of laziness and never performing maintenance on it. It's very cluttered now and performs tasks about 50% slower than it did when I first built it and booted up Windows.

This would normally be the time for me to seek a fresh slate and build a new rig, new harddrive and all. After a few days of researching parts, however, I'm a bit unimpressed with how much tech has improved, especially regarding CPUs. It seems that things have been improving more incrementally this time compared to previous periods and, since there are no new games out there that catch my interest, I'm sure my current hardware can still be fine for at least another year.

So if you've made it this far in my post, my question is if anyone has recommendations for programs or fool-proof methods for noobs like me on how to effectively clean your hard-drive, bringing it back to as close to Day 1 as possible, while still leaving you the choice to retain selected programs (re: games). I realize this is a basic question as I am a tactile / kinesthetic / visual person, I've always enjoyed the rig-building aspect of computers but I have absolutely no idea how stuff works beyond that, never did HD backups, etc. My only comfortable solution in the past has been to chuck it and build a new rig

Thanks

 

[AnitaPeterson]

Check out Piriform's freeware CCleaner (formerly CrapCleaner).

Its latest versions are quite capable of cleaning up unwanted stuff from the HDD, and can even delete/erase unused portions of HDD up to and beyond DoD specifications.

Also, take a look at another beloved piece of freeware, called Revo Uninstaller.

 

[Skaendo]

To add to AnitaPeterson's good advice you can use MSs Disk Cleanup in; Start->All Programs->Accessories->System Tools: Disk Cleanup.
When you run it, it will ask for the drive you want to clean up, but once it has checked you can also clean up system files.
Neither of these methods go far enough IMO. IE and FF have cashes that get very bloated after time. In-program options to clear cashes never cleans it all the way and the only way to do it is to delete the profile folder for said apps. This however will delete any logins and preferences, and possibly bookmarks.
Windows updates also hog a TON of HDD space, I'm not sure if Disk Cleanup deletes these any more, but it used to.

 

[Berryracer]

I have had troubles with CCleaner with it corrupting my indexing and rebuilding the indexing never fixed it so I stopped using it, if you google "ccleaner indexing corruption" you will know what I mean. They have supposedly fixed this since version 3.6 but apparently not so I stopped using it altogether and now no more Search Indexing errors in the Event Viewer.

I have created my own batch file which cleans out your temp files, windows update temp files, .NET Framework temp files, etc.

If you wanna use it, simply copy/paste the below code into a text notepad, then save it as whateveryouwant.bat

To run it, simply right click on the *.bat file and choose run as administrator. Obviously it won't clean any temp files that are in use so don't be surprised if you have 2 or 3 files left in your temp folder.

@echo off
title .
color 1F
openfiles >nul 2>&1
if %errorlevel% NEQ 0 goto :UACPrompt
goto :gotAdmin
:UACPrompt
    echo Set UAC = CreateObject^("Shell.Application"^) > "%temp%\getadmin.vbs"
    echo UAC.ShellExecute "%~fs0", "", "", "runas", 1 >> "%temp%\getadmin.vbs"
    "%temp%\getadmin.vbs"
    del "%temp%\getadmin.vbs"
    exit /b
:gotAdmin
DEL /S /F /Q "%temp%\*" 1>nul 2>nul
DEL /S /F /Q %systemroot%\temp\* 1>nul 2>nul
DEL /S /F /Q %systemroot%\inf\*.log 1>nul 2>nul
DEL /S /F /Q %systemroot%\Logs\CBS\* 1>nul 2>nul
DEL /S /F /Q %systemroot%\Logs\DPX\* 1>nul 2>nul
DEL /S /F /Q %systemroot%\Logs\DISM\* 1>nul 2>nul
DEL /S /F /Q %systemroot%\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\*.log 1>nul 2>nul
DEL /S /F /Q %systemroot%\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v4.0.30319\*.log 1>nul 2>nul
if exist %systemroot%\SysWOW64\cmd.exe DEL /S /F /Q %systemroot%\Microsoft.NET\Framework64\v2.0.50727\*.log 1>nul 2>nul
if exist %systemroot%\SysWOW64\cmd.exe DEL /S /F /Q %systemroot%\Microsoft.NET\Framework64\v4.0.30319\*.log 1>nul 2>nul
DEL /S /F /Q %systemroot%\SoftwareDistribution\Download\* 1>nul 2>nul
RD /S /Q "%LocalAppData%\Microsoft\Windows\WER\ReportQueue" 1>nul 2>nul
for /f %%i in ('"dir /s /b /ad "%temp%"" 2^>nul') do RD /S /Q %%i 1>nul 2>nul
for /f %%i in ('"dir /s /b /ad %windir%\SoftwareDistribution\Download" 2^>nul') do RD /S /Q %%i 1>nul 2>nul
for /f %%i in ('"dir /s /b /ad %windir%\temp" 2^>nul') do RD /S /Q %%i 1>nul 2>nul

 

[Chiefcrowe]

Here's what I'd do if reinstalling is absolutely not an option:

1. Uninstall all programs you don't need.
2. Run disk cleanup and also delete all the old windows update files (an option in disk cleanup)
3. Run CC Cleaner
4. Run antimalware and antivirus just in case.
5. Create a completely new user account, then after you finish setting things up, delete the old account and all the files in its profile.

 

[ignatzatsonic]

Over time, you might have accumulated a lot of unnecessary programs and services that run at startup. You can get a handle on them by looking at Task Manager and running msconfig and looking at the startup tab. How much stuff do you show on that tab? Windows will run with everything unchecked.

How many non-Microsoft services are typically running?

How many processes? 50 would be pretty low, but I've seen numerous instances of more than 100.

 

[AnitaPeterson]

@berryracer: Very nice job, mate! Thanks for making this available!

 

[Berryracer]

@berryracer: Very nice job, mate! Thanks for making this available!

Anytime, I am a person who always check Event Log Viewer to see what's happening in the background, and ever since using this batch file and ditching CCleaner, no more Indexing or other errors

Enjoy

 

[Xenixlor]

Thanks for all of the really helpful responses guys, I love this community. For the Task Manager, there are never any extraneous programs that are running that I can see, usually it's just one or two which I have deliberately opened (e.g. some video game or firefox). Under processes, the list is always really long but everything on the list is incredibly minimal in resource draw. The only exception is svchost, which is consuming tons of memory but I am told is a critical process for windows and therefore shouldn't be shut off.

I should note that I also have malwarebytes, spybot, and AVG that begin running at startup. This has been the case since day 1, however, and shutting these programs off has not yielded any difference in performance (except of course when AVG is running an active scan).

When I get home this weekend I'll employ Chief's process and substitute CCleaner for berry's method and report back on the results. Thanks everyone for your input!

One last question: In addition to all of this scrubbing, would doubling my ram to 8GB do anything (again, games still run well, it's all the other crap that doesn't, especially at startup). I'm also wondering if I have been cleaning out the case frequently enough.

 

[Charlie98]

You can monitor your RAM usage with Task Manager or another utility.... that will tell you if you need more RAM. More RAM or faster RAM won't help your problem much, if any... like the others mentioned, your issue is a bloated OS and old files.

I guess I'll ask this: How big is your OS drive, what kind of drive is it? I ask because if you have a standard HDD, and it's getting pretty full, it would possibly slow your system response down.

I would also disable all that AV software at startup... I run MSE and SAS at startup, and manually run SpyBot and MWB every now and then. Having a bunch of AV open at one time can cause conflicts and resource hogging.

 

[Berryracer]

Thanks for all of the really helpful responses guys, I love this community. For the Task Manager, there are never any extraneous programs that are running that I can see, usually it's just one or two which I have deliberately opened (e.g. some video game or firefox). Under processes, the list is always really long but everything on the list is incredibly minimal in resource draw. The only exception is svchost, which is consuming tons of memory but I am told is a critical process for windows and therefore shouldn't be shut off.

I should note that I also have malwarebytes, spybot, and AVG that begin running at startup. This has been the case since day 1, however, and shutting these programs off has not yielded any difference in performance (except of course when AVG is running an active scan).

When I get home this weekend I'll employ Chief's process and substitute CCleaner for berry's method and report back on the results. Thanks everyone for your input!

One last question: In addition to all of this scrubbing, would doubling my ram to 8GB do anything (again, games still run well, it's all the other crap that doesn't, especially at startup). I'm also wondering if I have been cleaning out the case frequently enough.

1) The damage that CCleaner has done is permanent and only a format would fix it. So substituting my script now with CCleaner won't do any good as your OS was already messed up along with its indexing.

Have you ever checked your Event Log? try that, and you will be surprised how many errors you have.

2) Running all those security programs at startup is useless and just killing your performance. what are you like constantly downloading malware / cracked programs that you need to run a scan on every startup? Fact is, if your system is currently clean, then you don't need to ever run a scan on startup since you have AVG active in realtime so you can't get a virus to start with. Just turn all that junk off.

3) I strongly advice you to format

4) 8 GB is definitely recommended, at this day and age, I wouldn't run any computer with less than 16GB of RAM to be honest considering how cheap RAM prices have become and remember, RAM is never enough, the more you give Windows, the more it'll use for caching / SUPERFETCH and your programs will run snappier.

 

[Xenixlor]

berryracer: To clarify, I don't run a virus scan at startup, I only do a virus scan once a week and during an idle time when I'm not going to use the computer for anything else (i.e. when I'm at work or running errands). So programs like AVG, MWB, and spybot are on at startup but passively. I've experimented by turning all of them off and never see a difference in performance, again I think because they are just sitting there passively otherwise, not running active scans. Also, I haven't tried CCleaner to date, are you saying that my indexing is still screwed for another reason or were you assuming that I've already run CCleaner?

Charlie, I only have one 7200rpm 1TB HD. I've never fiddled with multiple internal hard drives before though I intend to cut my teeth on that using SSDs whenever it's time for the next rig. There's still about 500 gigs left right now.

Thank you both!

 

[Virgorising]

Check out Piriform's freeware CCleaner (formerly CrapCleaner).

Its latest versions are quite capable of cleaning up unwanted stuff from the HDD, and can even delete/erase unused portions of HDD up to and beyond DoD specifications.

Also, take a look at another beloved piece of freeware, called Revo Uninstaller.

:thumbsup:

U bet, the CCleaner guy is one of the real luminaries in all of software.

I also like and recommend Glary Utilties:

http://www.glarysoft.com/glary-utilities/

I would not wanna be without either one.

 

[Berryracer]

berryracer: To clarify, I don't run a virus scan at startup, I only do a virus scan once a week and during an idle time when I'm not going to use the computer for anything else (i.e. when I'm at work or running errands). So programs like AVG, MWB, and spybot are on at startup but passively. I've experimented by turning all of them off and never see a difference in performance, again I think because they are just sitting there passively otherwise, not running active scans. Also, I haven't tried CCleaner to date, are you saying that my indexing is still screwed for another reason or were you assuming that I've already run CCleaner?

Charlie, I only have one 7200rpm 1TB HD. I've never fiddled with multiple internal hard drives before though I intend to cut my teeth on that using SSDs whenever it's time for the next rig. There's still about 500 gigs left right now.

Thank you both!

Thanks for the clarification.

But again, in my experience, running more than one security program is overkill and only causes trouble. Especially if both are running in real time, scanning the same file on access, that's a big killer. Most AV programs on their forums, they advice against using 2 programs even if they're not active at the same time. The only time I would use MBAM is when I want to clean a client's heavily infected PC. But on my PC, since it already has a good AV, and I only visit safe sites and don't use any cracks, even an AV is overkill but I run it just for the heck of feeling *safER*

Again, it's your system, your choice, but if I were you, I would uninstall everything but AVG and keep SUPERAntiSpyware installed (on demand only) just to scan for those harmful/tracking cookies, but not to have another scanner, it is simply not needed.

If I ever feel really suspicious about a file and I want to double check, simply submit it to Virus Total and you can see the results, no need to install MBAM (it only finds False Positives anyway on a clean system)

 

[Virgorising]

But again, in my experience, running more than one security program is overkill and only causes trouble. Especially if both are running in real time, scanning the same file on access, that's a big killer. Most AV programs on their forums, they advice against using 2 programs even if they're not active at the same time.

U bet. One of the first things I learned re our technology. And everyone agrees re this basic tenet....yes, starting with the architects of AV and IS suites.

All you need is one good one. And then, to augment, a good antimalware app.

Again, Norton IS, for one, runs invisibly in the background. It updates and scans ongoing.

 

[John Connor]

Ccleaner, System Ninja and Windows Disk cleaner.

Use Revouninstaller to remove programs.