System Ninja

Nearly every PC can get some kind of benefit from regularly cleaning out junk files, emptying system caches, and other preventative maintenance measures. While premium system cleaners emphasize deep cleaning, frequent updates, extra features, and even technical support, freeware system cleaners haven't been sitting still. System Ninja is a freeware system cleaner that includes a Junk Scanner and a Startup Manager.

When System Ninja's installation wizard finished, it asked if we wanted to open the program. We clicked OK but received an error message, and the program failed to launch. The troubleshooting guide on the program's site mentioned several possible causes. However, we were able to open System Ninja from its Start Menu entry, and it opened normally after that.

System Ninja's clean and simple interface features a vertical row of buttons for accessing its features, each of which displayed its results in the main window in a spreadsheet-style list view, with options appropriate to each. The program offers three Office-style skins to choose from, and we could add or remove ignored files, but the program's Settings don't offer much more than that.

We started with the Junk Scanner, which let us choose which areas to scan, including some fairly unusual entries like current torrent tags, incompatible files, and game caches. Like similar tools, it asked us to close our browser. The scan turned up quite a lot of stuff--more than CCleaner, which we use daily. We could select files to delete or delete them all at once. Next we tried the Startup Manager, which let us remove items from our system startup list. Be sure not to disable any important drivers or programs with this feature. The Process Manager displays running processes with the option to terminate them; again, be careful ending processes. The System Analysis feature extracts and displays all kinds of system information, including CPU, motherboard, and BIOS data. Extras include a checksum tool and folder scanner.

System Ninja did a good job, scanning and cleaning thoroughly without targeting critical files. It packs useful extras, yet it's compact, lightweight, and fast.