[Leswaugh]

Hi, Can you please advise me on the best value for money PC cleanup software. I am currently using AVG PCtuneup 2011 and scan once a week. It seems to do an effective job, but I as there are numerous similar products on the market could you advise me which would be the best one for me to run on my desktop(Vista) and my laptop(7)

[compnovo]

Leswaugh, on 23 December 2011 - 02:28 AM, said:

Hi, Can you please advise me on the best value for money PC cleanup software. I am currently using AVG PCtuneup 2011 and scan once a week. It seems to do an effective job, but I as there are numerous similar products on the market could you advise me which would be the best one for me to run on my desktop(Vista) and my laptop(7)

Hi and welcome to the forums,
I occasionally use ccleaner (http://www.piriform.com/ccleaner) although the general consensus these days is that registry cleaners do more harm than good --- I like to use it after uninstalling a program to remove leftover stuff. Other than that I use only the tools built into Windows 7 (defrag, error checking, cleanup, etc.) because I don't trust that those tuneup utilities really do anything useful. Just my opinion...

[LiveBrianD]

Yeah... I messed up my PC so that I couldn't login a while ago, and I suspect ccleaner's registry cleaner. I use the regular cleaner part of ccleaner though.

[noname]

Leswaugh, on 23 December 2011 - 02:28 AM, said:

Hi, Can you please advise me on the best value for money PC cleanup software. I am currently using AVG PCtuneup 2011 and scan once a week. It seems to do an effective job, but I as there are numerous similar products on the market could you advise me which would be the best one for me to run on my desktop(Vista) and my laptop(7)

I agree they do more harm than good, I used CC Cleaner and it messed up my desktop and to top it off I could not uninstall it from control panel, I had to do a driver roll back to get rid of it.

[oregonnerd]

Leswaugh, on 23 December 2011 - 02:28 AM, said:

Hi, Can you please advise me on the best value for money PC cleanup software. I am currently using AVG PCtuneup 2011 and scan once a week. It seems to do an effective job, but I as there are numerous similar products on the market could you advise me which would be the best one for me to run on my desktop(Vista) and my laptop(7)

CCleaner or Wise Registry Cleaner* but you don't need to run it anything like once a week unless there are other problems...and both are free.

*don't accept any added toolbars or whatever...and with CCleaner take off the Yahoo toolbar if it comes packaged.
G

[coastie65]

I agree with the above post in that you don't need to use it too often. I am not familiar with Wise Cleaner, but another good one would be atf Cleaner I have used that as well as CCLeaner and both are good.

[brainout]

I've had real good luck with TuneUp Utilities 2011. I also bought its 2012, but uninstalled it; I think I can make 2012 work properly, so might reinstall it. See my review of 2011 and 2012 in Amazon.

The only problem with 2012, is that its Program Deactivator is too aggressive. But there is a way to control it: make TuneUp's functions DEPEND on a password, first. That way, the program won't do anything automatically, unless authorized by your password. I've read the complaints against TuneUp here in the forum, and they center on wanting to be able to turn it off. The password method in essence makes it 'sleep', since a password is required.

I thought that password method was available in 2011 as well, but now I can't find where. Here's the trick with either edition: run the Registry Cleaner program SEPARATELY. When you do that, it's manual and will not automatically clean or change anything. This way, you can examine what it says is bloating your registry, and even EDIT the registry yourself. Its program makes it easy to edit the registry, should you choose. This editing is vital, especially if you set up certain programs to run on external drives which are not connected at the time you run the Registry editor. You can tell TuneUp to ignore what it thinks is wrong, thereby preserving the registry for those programs, for example.

I love this function; the Rescue Center also allows you to undo previous changes. (The closest rival was in Norton SystemWorks, but NSW is no longer sold, and the later editions no longer offer Registry editing.)

All but the Styler functions in TuneUp, I use. The Styler functions all revert to XP themes, which I dislike. If you like them, you'll like the Styler, too.

This post has been edited by brainout: 20 September 2012 - 05:06 PM