As the go-to techie among friends and family, I’ve worked on countless PCs over the past two decades. Threat vectors have evolved and can be the root cause of all sorts of issues but more often than not, it’s the long-term accumulation of unwanted or unneeded files that leads to a sluggish system.
Think of it in terms of a vehicle. Without regular maintenance, performance and reliability is going to suffer. CCleaner is a lot like an auto tune-up; an excellent first step in the hunt for lost performance that consolidates a bevy of useful tools into a single, neat package. That’s why it’s been a mainstay in my digital toolbox since its debut in the early 2000s.
For a limited time, only until June 30, TechSpot readers can grab a one-year subscription of CCleaner Professional for just a buck – a savings of more than 96% off the regular retail price of $29.95.
The free version of CCleaner is powerful in its own right but to get the most thorough cleaning, CCleaner Professional is what you want. It includes additional features not found in the base app including a performance optimizer that identifies programs slowing down your system, rates their impact on performance, and allows you to put them into sleep mode so they don’t automatically launch during system boot. With fewer apps running, you may also get a bit more runtime out of your laptop’s battery.
A custom clean analysis on my machine revealed Spotify is consuming more than 4 GB of space for caching purposes. That seems excessive, especially on a PC that’s only about six months old.
Google Chrome’s cache and the Recycle Bin were my two other data hogs, at nearly 1.3 GB and 2.8 GB, respectively. Flushing everything would free up more than 8.5 GB of space – nice.
The driver updater scans your devices to make sure all are running the latest available drivers. Armed with this information, you can either visit your hardware provider’s support page to get updated drivers directly from the source for manual installation or let CCleaner Professional do the dirty work.
Personally, I prefer to update my drivers manually but having CCleaner clue me in on what’s out of date is certainly handy.
Two of the app’s most powerful tools are the browser cleaner and the registry cleaner. The former flushes temporary cookies that can slow down web browsing and web trackers that raise privacy concerns due to the personal data they collect about your browsing history and demographics. Cookies and trackers also eat up space, which can be a real hindrance on older machines.
The registry cleaner, meanwhile, is effective at removing duplicate or broken entries, invalid firewall rules, and more. Tinkering with the registry can be risky, however, so be sure to follow through with CCleaner’s prompt to create a backup before making any changes just in case.
CCleaner Professional always seeks confirmation before making changes or deleting files. If you’re unsure about a specific action, simply untick it until you can do more research and move on.
Whether you’re looking to restore pep to an aging PC or want to keep your current machine running in tip-top shape, at $1 for a full year, you can’t afford not to add CCleaner Professional to your arsenal.
Don’t let time run out. The offer expires on June 30, 2024.