NWA-PCUG Newsletter Article, July 2008
Improve PC Performance with “Wise” Cleaners
By Ira Wilsker, APCUG Director;
Columnist, The Examiner, Beaumont, TX; Radio & TV Show Host

Iwilsker@apcug.net
(click to email author)


WEBSITES:
http://www.wisecleaner.com
http://www.wisecleaner.com/download.html - FREE Versions
http://www.wisecleaner.com/downwrc_tp.html - Download PRO (Paid) versions

I recently had a call from a graduate student who had a two-year-old notebook computer with XP, who was suffering a severe degradation in performance. She had already run both Trend Micro’s Housecall (housecall.antivirus.com) and Microsoft’s OneCare (safety.live.com, click on the shield in the center of the page) to ensure that her computer was free of viruses and worms, as well as other malware. She ran Spybot Search & Destroy (http://www.safer-networking.org) to be sure she was clean of spyware, and used Spybot’s advanced mode to clean her startup of unnecessary items, freeing up system resources (Mode-Advanced-Tools-Startup). Her computer had a gig of memory, adequate for normal usage, and had adequate hard drive space available. Scanning the hard drive for errors, and defragmenting it, provided a negligible improvement in performance.

While these preceding steps are a reasonable activity and the traditional tasks to undertake to try and improve the performance of a computer that had performed well in the past, they do not address all of the factors that can degrade performance. Sometimes excessive clutter on the hard drive, or in the computer’s registry (a large internal database of information and settings for the computer’s hardware and software) can severely hurt performance. Fortunately, there are many tools and utilities which can resolve these problems, and possibly lead to significantly improved PC performance.

As we use our computer, the hard drive becomes cluttered with enormous amounts of useless data that serves no other purpose than to take up space on our hard drives. This clutter makes it more difficult for the hard drive controller to rapidly access the useful data on the hard drive as the file tables are larger than necessary in order to handle the clutter. A cluttered hard drive is also slower to write to, and will more likely become severely fragmented, leading to a degradation in overall computer performance as the hard drive and CPU have to work harder to write and read data. Running utilities to check the hard drive for errors (generically referred to as “Scandisk”), and any of the many utilities that can defragment the hard drive, will have to work harder and longer in order to complete their respective tasks. Simply, a cluttered hard drive may be very inefficient and a contributor to a slow computer.

Another potential source of degraded computer performance is a cluttered registry. The registry is a large database used by the operating system that contains critical information on the hardware, software, settings, and other important information about the computer. This information is read by the computer as it is booted, and is frequently accessed as hardware and software is used. As new software and hardware is installed, data is written to the registry. As old hardware is removed and unwanted software uninstalled, it is likely that obsolete data is left in the registry. As the registry becomes cluttered with obsolete and otherwise useless information, the size of the registry increases substantially, and it becomes slower for running processes, hardware, and other software to find what it needs in the registry, which consumes system resources, requires CPU power, and otherwise degrades system performance. Other undesirable effects of a cluttered registry include lockups, crashes, “blue screens of death”, and other unwanted problems. Cleaning the registry, the process of removing obsolete and otherwise useless data from the registry, can lead to significant improvements in performance, and a more satisfactory computing experience.

A small software company, using the moniker “WiseCleaner” (http://www.wisecleaner.com), offers a pair of utilities that can safely and effectively remove clutter from the hard drive, and delete obsolete “junk” from the registry. These two utilities, each available in a fully functional free version, and in enhanced “PRO” commercial versions ($19.95), can perform the necessary tasks of cleaning the hard drive and the registry. Both programs, “Wise Registry Cleaner 3”, and “Wise Disk Cleaner 3” offer an intuitive and somewhat similar interface.

“Wise Disk Cleaner 3” offers the user the option of using a “wizard” to assist the user in determining what type of “junk” files to delete, options to implement, folders to clean, and optional program settings. Experienced users may want to skip the wizard, and run the program manually. Items that are safe to delete are pre-checked for deletion. Clicking on an item will open a description of that item at the bottom of the window. Upon the completion of the scan of the hard drive, the user may have the deleted items sent to the recycle bin (which allows for easy recovery if desired), or permanently deleted. My recommendation is to delete to the recycle bin, and in a few days (or weeks) if it is confirmed that the deleted files are indeed no longer needed, then the recycle bin should be emptied; this will finally free up hard drive space. In my personal experiences on many computers, it is not at all uncommon to free up gigabytes of hard drive space. It is a good practice to clean the hard drive, wait a few days to verify the uselessness of the deleted files, empty the recycle bin, and then defragment the hard drive. This is one of the several tasks commonly needed to improve computer performance.

The free version is adequate to clean the hard drive, but the PRO version of “Wise Disk Cleaner 3” also allows the user to send deleted item to a designated compressed folder, which is much faster than sending to the recycle bin, plus also allows for the selective recovery of deleted files, while still saving hard drive space.

Wise offers an excellent registry cleaner, Wise Registry Cleaner 3. I have tried many registry cleaning utilities, and found that this one from Wise is one of the best. It is fast and safe. Also available in a free version, and a PRO version ($19.95), this program will scan the registry for obsolete or erroneous entries, and label each with either the green “check” shield (safe to remove), or an orange shield with an “!” warning the user that the registry item is “Not fully safe to fix”. The default option on the program automatically creates an “Undo” file which allows the users to restore any deleted entries. While the free version is totally adequate just to clean the registry, the PRO version provides several other types of computer optimization, including improving the performance of the disk cache, desktop menu, file system, network, boot speed, and other computing functions.

Cleaning the hard drive of useless clutter, and removing so-called “junk” entries of the registry are but two of the common tasks that can be performed to improve computer performance. WiseCleaner offers two of the best utilities to accomplish these tasks; they are very worthy of a try. For enhanced functionality, the PRO versions may be worth consideration.

Click here to return to top



==================================================================