NWA-PCUG Newsletter Article, April 2009
Free PC Utilities from Piriform Software
By Ira Wilsker, APCUG Director;
Columnist, The Examiner, Beaumont, TX; Radio & TV Show Host

Iwilsker@apcug.net
(click to email author)

WEBSITES:
http://www.ccleaner.com
http://www.defraggler.com
http://www.recuva.com

There are some excellent free software utilities available that are every bit as good as their commercial counterparts, and sometimes even better. One software publisher, with an almost unknown name, but with very popular products is Piriform Software. Piriform, a British software company located in London, distributes free software that it creates, and is financially supported by the advertising on its websites and donations. While Piriform may not be well known, its software is very well known, with over a quarter-billion copies downloaded! All Piriform utilities are totally free to download and used both by individuals and by corporations, or other organizations.

Piriform’s best known software is its CCleaner, available for free download at http://www.ccleaner.com. Originally released with a filename that many found objectionable, the moniker was shortened to CCleaner which led to explosive popularity, and a very loyal following. CCleaner is arguably one of the most widely used utilities in the cyber-world, with over 260 million copies downloaded. CCleaner is totally freeware and contains no spyware and adware. CCleaner is a system optimizer that can improve system performance, enhance internet privacy, and remove useless and obsolete files from the computer, freeing up disk space. CCleaner is one of the utilities that I carry with me on a flash drive whenever I am asked to checkout a computer, and in some cases has safely removed gigabytes of outdated files from overly cluttered hard drives. CCleaner also includes an effective registry cleaner that can remove obsolete and useless entries from the registry, which may improve performance. (CAUTION: Always use the backup feature in CCleaner, and make a system restore point before running any registry repair utility!). One especially nice feature of CCleaner is its speed, typically scanning a hard drive in a matter of seconds, and rarely more than a few minutes.

Web surfers are often unaware of how many out of date and otherwise temporary files are saved in the cache and other places on the hard drive, often creating an enormous amount of clutter on the hard drive that consumes valuable space, and can also lead to a degradation of performance. CCleaner works with Internet Explorer, Firefox, Google Chrome, Opera, and Safari, and can selectively clean and remove temporary internet files, history, cookies, download history, auto-complete forms, and index.dat files, often freeing up large amounts of hard drive space. By my personal choice, I only choose to delete my temporary internet files and index.dat files, but that still frees up almost all of the wasted hard drive space, as the remaining items are relatively tiny. Some users who want to maximize their privacy and security may choose to delete all cookies (small text files places on the hard drive by websites), but many cookies are a convenience item, and not a security or privacy threat.

While controversial in some tech circles, the cleaning of the computer registry of old and obsolete entries may slightly improve performance. To mitigate any possible damage that may result from an erroneous registry deletion, CCleaner integrates a comprehensive registry backup feature which can quickly restore any deleted entries. CCleaner’s registry cleaner can remove unused and out-of-date registry entries, including file extensions, ActiveX controls, classIDs, progIDs, uninstallers, shared DLLs, fonts, help files, application paths, icons, invalid shortcuts and other useless entries. In addition to cleaning browser files and the registry, CCleaner also cleans the residue left behind by many other applications, including Windows Media Player, eMule, KaZaa, Google Toolbar, Netscape, Microsoft Office, Nero, Adobe Acrobat, WinRAR, WinAce, WinZip and many other programs, which will not just save space on the hard drive, but may also improve the performance of those programs.

In the “Tools” section of CCleaner are an uninstall utility and a startup manager. The uninstall utility can be used to initiate the removal of any unwanted software, and the startup manager can be used to stop any unwanted software from loading at boot. Both utilities are useful in improving system performance.

For those who may be reluctant to use CCleaner to maintain their computers, Piriform states, “CCleaner was designed from the ground to be safe and secure to use. It has multiple levels of checks in place to ensure that it cannot delete any useful information or documents you may still need.”

CCleaner will run on any PC with Windows 98, ME, NT4, 2000, 2003 and 2008 Server, all versions of XP including 64 bit, and all editions of Vista including 64 bit. Since it is a small program (3 mb download), and utilizes minimal hard drive space when stored, and minimal memory when run, Piriform states that there are no minimum memory or hard drive requirements to run CCleaner. No wonder that all of this power in a small, free program has gained such a large and loyal following.

Piriform also publishes two other useful, excellent, and free utilities, both of which have earned a large and loyal following. Piriform’s newest utility is Defraggler (http://www.defraggler.com), a simple but powerful disk defragging utility that has features lacking in most other defraggers. While Defraggler can do a full drive defrag like other utilities, what makes it unique is the ability to defrag only selected files, without the need to process the entire hard drive. Defraggler is a single exe file less than 1 mb in size that requires no special installation on the hard drive. I carry the Defraggler file on my flash drive, from which it can be run on any compatible computer. Defraggler will run on any Windows PC with Windows 2000, 2003, XP, or Vista, both 32 and 64 bit versions.

Piriform’s other free utility is Recuva (http://www.recuva.com), pronounced “recover”, which is a file recovery utility. Recuva can recover and restore files that have been deleted from the computer, digital camera memory cards, MP3 players, and other devices, even if they have been emptied from the recycle bin. It may be possible to recover files that had been lost from program bugs, system crashes, and viruses. I have used Recuva to recover deleted files from my flash drive, and the SD cards from both my digital camera and my GPS. This is another small but very useful utility that I carry on my flash drive, as I will never know when there is an urgent or critical file to recover. As with all other file recovery utilities, deleted files can only be recovered if they have not been overwritten, which is another reason to always have a current and contemporary backup of any important files. Recuva will run on any Windows PC with Windows 98 to Vista.

London based Piriform is to be commended for producing such fine and free utilities as these three above. If you use one or more of them, please seriously consider making a PayPal donation from the link on the respective webpage; that way maybe Piriform can be incentivized to produce more excellent and free software.

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