TVcleaner for Windows

Windows PC owners who use Internet Explorer can give their systems a boost with TVcleaner from LT-Box. It's a small, simple, free tool that does one thing: it deletes temporary files held by Windows and IE that are supposed to speed up your system but can actually slow things down when they pile up. It's much quicker to use than running the Windows disk cleanup tool or manually deleting temporary files. TVcleaner runs in most versions of Windows up to Vista and 7, but only 32-bit editions.

TVcleaner has the sort of ultrabasic interface that makes for quick and easy use. It's just a plain gray dialog with only three buttons: Settings, CleanUp, and Scan. The options are minimal; a few check boxes for cleaning the Internet Explorer cache and history and for running the NT Registry Optimizer in Windows XP installations. We installed TVcleaner on several machines, with similar results each time. The program is simplicity itself to use. We clicked Scan, which initiated a scan of the specified caches, browsing history, and other temporary files held on the target machine by Windows and IE. TVcleaner displayed the total amount of space deleting these files would recapture. We clicked CleanUp, and TVcleaner deleted the files. It's as simple as that. Of course, TVcleaner really doesn't do anything Windows doesn't or can't do. What it does is combine several tedious functions into one or two quick clicks, based on the not illogical notion that, if it's easier to do, you'll probably do it more often, and your system will run more smoothly as a result.

In the days when hard drives were sold by the megabyte, you needed tools like TVcleaner to get through a computing session. Temporary files are less of a problem these days, but the other side of the coin is that large caches can quickly fill to the brim, causing much the same performance drag as before, especially at startup. Keeping TVcleaner or a similar tool handy will help keep your system running fresh and fast, and it might just encourage you to keep better track of overall PC maintenance.