Windows Maintenance Done Right. Part 2
How can you make your Windows young again? Regular maintenance is the key. Yesterday we talked about how you can defrag your hard drives and fix Widnows registry issues. Now, it's time for even more maintenance tips and tricks, helping you to optimize your system up to the ultimate performance peffection!
Deleting the Leftover Files
CCleaner is great, that's true. However, there is one problem CCleaner is not that great at. The naughty leftover files. The wicked lefotver files. The crooked, knavish, iniquitous leftover files.
For those of you who are staring the display in bewilderment: I didn't think up this term two sentences ago. In fact, the leftover files are tiny files planted onto your PC by the software you install. Their second important feature is that they don't get deleted when the corresponding software is uninstalled. They just stay there, forever and ever, until you re-install Windows or bury the computer in your backyard. Logically enough, their contribution to ruining your system performance is hard to overestimate. Other than that, it is not really comforting when some obscure files are lying around deep in your system folders, doing God knows what. So, Apple's iTunes (apart from installing ) leaves 13 leftover files on your PC, McAfee SiteAdvisor's heirloom is 44 ones. What are they needed for? No idea absolutely.
The optimal way to fix this issue would be to use some tool, which would find and erase the fiendish leftover files. Theoretically, CCleaner we talked about in the previous part has such an option. Still, it doesn't work really perfect, to put it mildly. And there is only one way to get rid of the deeper files: find some special utility.
Keeping in mind this lofty goal have I embarked upon the honorable quest of never-ending searching. My award, my Holy Grail of the leftover files deletion was Reno Uninstaller. This small program by VS Revo Group finds all leftover files and allows you to delete them in just a couple of clicks. Theoretically, after you deleted a program with Revo Uninstaller, it should look as if it were never installed on your system.
iTunes' Mortal Remains in your System
Program uninstallation in Revo Uninstaller: Launch Revo Uninstaller and wait till the software list is compiled. Choose the program you want to unstall and select one of the four deletion modes. In order to suppress even the haziest memory of this software being ever installed on your PC, select the Advanced mode. Revo Uninstaller will create a system restore point (one never knows what can happen when you're rooting around in the Windows registry) and launch the program's native uninstaller. After you have finished uninstalling the program, you can proceed to checking the leftover Registry items (you can also delete them with CCleaner, but why bother if you can do it in one place?) and the leftover files. Choose the 'Select All' and 'Delete' options. Done!
Getting Windows to Do the Hard Work
Now imagine you've followed all our maintenance tips. You defrag your hard drives regularly, your registry is clear as a Scot's head after four glasses of Scotch, you leftover files have perished forever. However, there's still a plenty of work to be done. There are thousands of temporary files, dozens of file formats you've never used and even forgotten you installed the software supporting them. And of course, all this slows down your system just the way any other trash files do, and the only way out is to delete it all. The only problem is that you have to do it manually. Day by day, week by week, you clean your system tirelessly... and tediously. The question arises: can you set up a maintenance schedule?
Yes, you can. Doing so in Windows 7 is a little bit tricky, but Microsoft has made up for it in Windows 8, so the routine maintenance can be done easier than ever.
Automatic Maintenance in Windows 8
Windows 7. This one is one helluva maze. Enter the Start menu, open Control Panel. Choose System and Security and click Adminsitrative Tools. When in there, open Task Scheduler. Here we go!
Windows 8. Type 'autmatic maintenance' in yout System Search. Open the suggested Automatic Maintenance icons and change the few available options the way you like. Ta-da!
Check the first part of this article with other great maintenance tips!
