Computer Cleaners - When the treatment is worse than the disease
Problem
While surfing the Web, you may often stumble upon a bunch of programs claiming to optimize and speed up your operating system, often brought to you by annoying and sometimes malicious pop-up windows.
The producers of these programs often use a very aggressive marketing language on their websites, promising to deliver whopping performance improvements.
The wording of these websites should raise a red flag for you right away.
This software is a real cancer. In the best-case scenario, it's but crapware/adware/bloatware; in the worst case, downright malware/spyware.
Keep off fake cleaners!!! The fewer third-party software you install, the better.
These programs can harm your system by corrupting system files, or filling up your hard drive with bloated applications, often running in background. Sometimes they might even mess up your OS so badly that you have to re-install everything from scratch.
While surfing the Web, you may often stumble upon a bunch of programs claiming to optimize and speed up your operating system, often brought to you by annoying and sometimes malicious pop-up windows.
The producers of these programs often use a very aggressive marketing language on their websites, promising to deliver whopping performance improvements.
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The wording of these websites should raise a red flag for you right away.
This software is a real cancer. In the best-case scenario, it's but crapware/adware/bloatware; in the worst case, downright malware/spyware.
Keep off fake cleaners!!! The fewer third-party software you install, the better.
These programs can harm your system by corrupting system files, or filling up your hard drive with bloated applications, often running in background. Sometimes they might even mess up your OS so badly that you have to re-install everything from scratch.
Solution
Use reputable cleaners
If you just want to give cleaners a go, use reputable programs coming from proven and renowned sources.
Windows Cleaners
The best cleaner for Windows is, IMHO, CCleaner, reputable and tested.
Use reputable cleaners
If you just want to give cleaners a go, use reputable programs coming from proven and renowned sources.
Windows Cleaners
The best cleaner for Windows is, IMHO, CCleaner, reputable and tested.
I also used Comodo System Utilities and Glary Utilities, very decent pieces of software in this category.
OS X Cleaners
The best product for OS X is OnyX. It cleans up your Mac without destroying your system, unlike Mac Keeper (which I strongly advise against) and has numerous helpful maintenance utilities. I'd recommend you not to play around too much with them, though, unless you know what you're doing, because they're for expert users.
An alternative is CCleaner (OS X version).
When cleaners are a waste of time
Cleaners are no use, and you don't want to waste your time on them, when:
- Your operating system is very messed up, because of numerous installs and uninstalls.
- You run an outdated version (Vista, XP, or earlier for Windows; Snow Leopard, Lion, Mountain Lion, Mavericks or Yosemite for OS X)
- You have insufficient RAM/storage space. If you run a 32-bit version with 2 GB RAM, or a 64-bit version with 4 GB, no cleaner can dramatically speed up your computer, because you simply need more RAM.
In these cases, you can only re-install everything from scratch, upgrade to a newer version, add RAM, or replace your HDD drive with an SSD.
If you're on Windows and none of the previous steps help, consider switching to Linux.
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