CCleaner

The Web Atom's CCleaner Enhancer adds support for more than 270 programs to CCleaner, the popular system and Registry-cleaning tool from Piriform. CCleaner Enhancer adds rules and definitions sourced from the Piriform Support Forum and other online resources to CCleaner's built-in WinApp2.ini system. When you run CCleaner again, the new programs are automatically included and ready to be selected for scanning.

We downloaded and ran the latest version of CCleaner prior to installing CCleaner Enhancer, to better gauge the additional effects. CCleaner Enhancer first asks to check for updates, which is usually wise. We ran CCleaner's … Read more

Whether getting rid of an old computer or just making a clean start for your favorite hard drive--do hard drives even get to be honored as "favorites?"--it's important to wipe it clean. With one's and zero's and data recovery, though, it's harder than you might think to make sure that your personal data is gone forever. This collection of drive bombs showcases four free programs for internal and external drive data deletion, as well as files and folders on the fly.

For shredding individual files or folders, or entire drives, Eraser reminds me … Read more

At first they tried Google's Chrome browser out of curiosity. Now, the growing ranks of those who have switched to Chrome (or vacillate, like CNET's own Stephen Shankland) will be looking for browser support services and add-ons to complete the transition.

The latest version of the free, solid Internet privacy application CCleaner is one app to oblige. In late December, it added Chrome to its list of supported browsers, along with Internet Explorer, Mozilla/Firefox, Safari, and Opera.

CCleaner actually reaches deeper in Chrome than in Opera and Safari, dumping the download history and saved form information in … Read more

Firefox and Internet Explorer extension Click&Clean is aimed at those who prefer the history-sweeping CCleaner to Firefox's built-in browsing tracks sterilizer. Click&Clean takes the same number of mouse clicks or keyboard strokes to activate as the native cleaner, opening a CCleaner window preconfigured for cleaning Firefox. Obviously, you must download CCleaner for Click&Clean to work.

Click&Clean adds only a single button to your Firefox toolbar, so it won't clutter your browser window. Clicking it opened the CCleaner interface immediately, and from there you can have it wipe your tracks with … Read more

Although it lacks a few of the bells and whistles found in other PC-cleaning applications, this free program offers more than enough features to make it a worthy download. CCleaner's interface is logically designed and makes it easy to wipe away your tracks from Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera, and Google Chrome from various Windows system areas, and from some third-party applications.

CCleaner doesn't support the large number of extraneous programs that some competitors do, but it can erase traces from such popular programs as Spybot - Search & Destroy and WinZip. CCleaner now offers secure file erasing along … Read more

Although it lacks a few of the bells and whistles found in other PC-cleaning applications, this free program offers more than enough features to make it a worthy download. CCleaner's interface is logically designed and makes it easy to wipe away your tracks from Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Opera, from various Windows system areas, and from some third-party applications.

CCleaner doesn't support the large number of extraneous programs that some competitors do, but it can erase traces from such popular programs as Spybot - Search & Destroy and WinZip. CCleaner now offers secure file erasing along with a … Read more

I'm always looking for a little bit more performance from my PCs, so I regularly use Piriform's free CCleaner utility to clear out the clutter on my systems' hard drives. (Note that CCleaner is donationware, so if you find yourself using it regularly, drop a few ducats in the virtual coffer.)

The last time I ran CCleaner on my XP test machine, it freed up almost 2GB of hard-drive space by removing temporary Internet files, sweeping out the Recycle Bin, and deleting various Windows updates and other system and application files I no longer needed. Then I clicked … Read more

For years, CCleaner has been our go-to application for safely clearing temporary files, unused and invalid Registry entries, and Internet tracks. The self-proclaimed "crap cleaner" does what it says without much fuss and with a few extra configuration options.

With the exception of applying its scrubbing efforts to Firefox 3.0, the latest CCleaner update is predominantly a bug-fixing and minor tweaking release. There are back-end changes to fix bugs that skipped over a few Internet Explorer cookies, to improve the application's internal memory, and to keep the CCleaner icon from getting locked into the system tray. … Read more

I received an e-mail this morning from Pearl, the source of whose frustration is the failure of a prompted update. She writes:

I have been using LimeWire Basic for about four years with no problem. This morning I was using it and a box came up telling me to download an update, which I did. Then it all disappeared from my screen, and also took with it my original LimeWire, too. So I tried to download it again only to be told it was a corrupt file. I did this a couple of times with no joy.

I have been … Read more