- Mar 30, 2014
- 468
PC Cleaning Apps are a Scam: Here’s Why (and How to Speed Up Your PC)
PC cleaning apps are digital snake oil. The web is full of ads for applications that want to “clean your PC” and “make it feel like new.” Don’t pull out your credit card — these apps are terrible and you don’t need them.
If you do want to “clean your PC,” you can do it for free. Windows includes built-in PC cleaning tools that can do almost all of what the average PC cleaning app will do for you.
Let’s Investigate a PC Cleaning App
So what do these apps do, anyway? Nothing.
Windows can remove junk files, clear Internet browsing traces, and defragment your hard drive without installing additional software.
Any System Utility offers a “free diagnosis,” which is little more than an attempt to scare people into thinking their computers have thousands of “issues” that can be fixed for an easy!
After running a scan, you’ll see an alarming count of the number of problems on your computer. It found 26267 issues on our computer. That’s an extremely alarming number — but what exactly is an issue?
Yes, your computer can be slow because its file system is fragmented. You can fix this by running the Disk Defragmenter tool included with Windows — the Disk Defragmenter runs automatically on a schedule, anyway. Most people shouldn’t have to worry about defragmenting their hard drives anymore.
How to Actually Clean Your PC
https://www.howtogeek.com/162683/pc-cleaning-apps-are-a-scam-heres-why-and-how-to-speed-up-your-pc/
PC cleaning apps are digital snake oil. The web is full of ads for applications that want to “clean your PC” and “make it feel like new.” Don’t pull out your credit card — these apps are terrible and you don’t need them.
If you do want to “clean your PC,” you can do it for free. Windows includes built-in PC cleaning tools that can do almost all of what the average PC cleaning app will do for you.
Let’s Investigate a PC Cleaning App
So what do these apps do, anyway? Nothing.
Windows can remove junk files, clear Internet browsing traces, and defragment your hard drive without installing additional software.
Any System Utility offers a “free diagnosis,” which is little more than an attempt to scare people into thinking their computers have thousands of “issues” that can be fixed for an easy!
After running a scan, you’ll see an alarming count of the number of problems on your computer. It found 26267 issues on our computer. That’s an extremely alarming number — but what exactly is an issue?
- Every browser cookie and history entry counts as a single issue.
- Every temporary file counts as a single issue, no matter how tiny it is.
- Invalid registry entries are considered issues, although they shouldn’t actually slow down your computer.
- Our registry can be compacted a bit, but this shouldn’t make a noticeable different in performance
- Every fragmented file counts as a single issue. MyCleanPC is measuring fragmentation based on the number of fragmented files, leading to a scary-looking 21.33% data fragmentation statistic. For comparison, the Windows Disk Defragmenter tells us we have 2% fragmentation.
Temporary files are not slowing down your computer, and neither are browser history entries or cookies. Registry entries are generally not a problem — there’s a reason Microsoft once created a registry cleaner of their own before discontinuing it and advising people not to use registry cleaners.
Yes, your computer can be slow because its file system is fragmented. You can fix this by running the Disk Defragmenter tool included with Windows — the Disk Defragmenter runs automatically on a schedule, anyway. Most people shouldn’t have to worry about defragmenting their hard drives anymore.
How to Actually Clean Your PC
https://www.howtogeek.com/162683/pc-cleaning-apps-are-a-scam-heres-why-and-how-to-speed-up-your-pc/
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