July 1, 2013

Removing Programs with Ashampoo Uninstaller – System Optimization Series

If only Windows had an Undo function when it came to programs. When you uninstall a program so much of it is left behind that it’s like you never got rid of it. You end up with orphaned files and folders all over the place. VirtualBox has an awesome Undo feature that lets you throw away any of the changes you make to a machine. Install apps with reckless abandon, change what you want, but then shut the machine down and check the option to discard changes and everything is back the way it was. Too bad you can’t get Windows to do that… Or can you? Installation Monitor tools have been around for a long time. I even remember Symantec putting out the Norton Uninstall Deluxe for Windows, which was actually a pretty decent tool for removing apps from your machine. It was also great for monitoring the changes made during an install. Yet another good tool from their […]

June 29, 2013

CCleaner – The Basics of System Maintenance – System Optimization Series

When it comes to system maintenance you may not need to look any further than CCleaner. This free tool should be the very first step in recovering space and cleaning the registry after deleting a slew of unused programs. The cleaning tools take care of the typical browser cleaning functions as well as cleaning up history from dozens of applications. You can easily remove the document history from Word and Media Player. Once that’s done you can check the registry for orphaned entries. Under the Tools option you get quick access to all your installed Apps so you can remove old progams. You can also see everything in the Startup group where you can either delete the entries or simply disable them. Don’t need a particular app for a little while? You can put in on pause instead of removing so you can go back later. You can also check out what Scheduled Tasks you have on your machine such […]

June 28, 2013

TuneUp Utilities 2013 – System Optimization Series

The barrage of tools available in TuneUp Utilities 2013 reminds me of the grandeur that once was Norton Utilities. Far more than just a simple cleanup utility TuneUp Utilities offers tools to check the heath of your hard drive, monitor which programs you haven’t used so they can be removed, disable startup programs, check where all your hard drive space is going and it even comes with a Turbo Mode that boosts system processes when the system gets bogged down. Of course it does the usual tasks of cleaning up hard drive space, cleaning the registry, defragging hard drives and removing browser traces. What I like about TuneUp Utilities is that it isn’t just using the built in Windows tools. It presents it’s own tool for toggling whether a program should start when Windows boots. It has it’s own Disk Space Explorer that allows you to see where hard drive space is being used and lets you move and delete […]

June 27, 2013

Ashampoo Winoptimizer 10 – System Optimization Series

A program that claims to clean and optimize your system needs to do more than just clear out the Internet cache and empty the recycle bin. It also needs to offer more than registry cleaning and registry defrag. All of those are decent ideas to recover some space and gain a small performance boost. They’re also built into Windows as well as free programs like CCleaner. In order to really boost performance you need to dig deep into the system and remove memory hogging programs, remove apps you don’t use on a regular basis, turn off unneeded services and make sure you’re not suffering from a hard drive failure. Does Ashampoo Winoptimizer 10 fit the bill? Sort of. On the surface it works like every other "optimizer" out there. It deletes the Internet cache for Internet Explorer and Firefox. It empties the Recycle Bin and gets rid of old System Restore points. There is the usual Registry Cleaner, Registry Defrag, […]

June 26, 2013

Norton Utilities 16 – System Optimization Series

For those of you who’ve been around computers for more than a few years remember the good ol’ Norton Utilities for Windows. If you’ve been in the game long enough, you remember the Norton Utilities for DOS. It was an awesome package loaded with a suite of tools for optimizing your system, removing junk files, defragging the disks, secuely erasing files and checking the health of the disks to warn you in the event of hard drive failures. It was a wondrous all in one suite of tools. Jump ahead to 2013 and Norton Utilities is still around and in Version 16 for Windows. I had the need of it services to try and tame the massive glut of files on my drive, defragement the drive, uninstall a series of apps, control the abundance of Windows Services and generally make the system faster. So how does this new version fair after all these years? To put it simply, not well. […]

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