Maintain Your Machine – 10 + 1 Free Computer System Tools

Renovate Your Computer With 10 + 1 Free System Tools

As well as keeping your machine physically clean, it is always good practice to keep your computer’s operating system and subsystems clean, so that you can get maximum performance from your machine.

With that in mind, I retested some of the free system tools I’ve rated and recommended over the last year or more, that will do a great job of revitalizing your system. These free applications are “the best of breed”, in my view.

If you have favorites that you’d like to see added to this list, then let me know with your comments.

CCleaner

CCleaner is a freeware system optimization, privacy and cleaning tool. It removes unused files from your system – allowing Windows to run faster and freeing up valuable hard disk space. It also cleans traces of your online activities such as your Internet history. Additionally, it contains a fully featured registry cleaner. But the best part is that it’s fast; normally taking less than a few seconds to run.

ccleaner2

Glary Utilities

Glary Utilities, a free all-in-one utility, is a terrific collection of system tools and utilities to fix, speed up, maintain and protect your PC. Personal experience with this application for the last 18 months has convinced me that a typical user can really benefit by having this application on their system. With this free program you can tweak, repair, optimize and improve your system’s performance; and its ease of operation makes it ideal for less experienced users.

glary-utilities 2

Advanced SystemCare Free 3.3.4

Advanced SystemCare Free is a comprehensive PC care utility that takes a one-click approach to help protect, repair, and optimize your computer. It provides an all-in-one and super convenient solution for PC maintenance and protection. All work will be done with 1 click and 1 minute.

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WinPatrol

Do you want to get a better understanding of what programs are being added to your computer? Then WinPatrol is the program for you. With WinPatrol, in your system tray, you can monitor system areas that are often changed by malicious programs.

You can monitor your startup programs and services, cookies and current tasks. Should you need to, WinPatrol allows you to terminate processes and enable, or disable, startup programs. There are additional features that make WinPatrol a very powerful addition to your security applications.

WinPatrol 2

Revo Uninstaller

Revo Uninstaller is a superior program to uninstall programs from your computer. This free program with its advanced and fast algorithm scans before, and after you uninstall an application. After the program’s regular uninstaller runs, you can remove additional unnecessary files, folders and registry keys that are usually left over on your computer. This feature is a definite plus.

RevoUninstaller

RunAlyzer

If you’re looking to track down spyware, or speed up system startup–and you’re technically astute–then RunAlyzer may be just what you need. Run it, and it performs a thorough analysis of all programs and services that run when you start up your computer.

Note: Recommended for advanced users only.

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Autoruns

This free utility has the most comprehensive knowledge of auto-starting locations of any startup monitor, in my view, and shows you what programs are configured to run during system boot up or login, and the order Windows processes them.

These programs will include ones in your startup folder, Run, RunOnce, and other Registry keys. You can configure Autoruns to show additional locations, including Explorer shell extensions, toolbars, browser helper objects, Winlogon notifications, auto-start services, and more. Autoruns goes considerably beyond the MSConfig utility bundled with Windows.

Autoruns

Regseeker

The longer you use Windows, the more cluttered your registry can become, especially if you regularly install and uninstall software. Many applications, on being uninstalled, leave behind “orphan” registry entries. They don’t remove all traces of themselves which can cause problems such as sluggish performance, system lockups, or a bloated registry that takes longer to load on startup. With the click of a button, Regseeker will scan your registry for these fragmented files, and safely remove them.

Note: Recommended for advanced users only.

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Wise Registry Cleaner

Wise Registry Cleaner is a free, non aggressive application that, as one of my friends says, hits a home run in the safety department. As it searches the Registry for obsolete/redundant registry keys, it differentiates between those that are “safe to fix”, and those that are “not fully safe to fix”.

To provide the greatest safety factor for those who are uncomfortable, or unfamiliar, with cleaning the Registry, the application’s default removal setting is “safe to fix”.

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Fresh UI

One of the oldest and most well established free Windows tweaking applications, Freshdevices’ Fresh UI is a powerful tool that allows you to configure and optimize your version of Windows.

This small (1.24 MB) program has a clean, easy to understand interface that gives you access to hundreds of system settings, some of which are hidden, and others that are just hard to find. The interface is organized by section for easy navigation, and it is complete with detailed descriptions for easy reference.

FreshUI 2

Auslogics Disk Defrag

The program is extremely easy to use, does not require any analysis phase and is faster than most disk defragmentation software I’ve tested in the past, and it’s free. In my view, it’s one more maintenance process in helping me get the maximum performance out of my hardware.

auslogics_disk_defrag

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12 Comments

Filed under Cleaning Your Computer, Computer Maintenance, Disk Cleaners, Freeware, New Computer User Software Tools, Older Adult Computer Users, Registry Cleaners, Slow Computer, System Process Scanners, System Tweaks, System Utilities, Uninstall Managers, Uninstall Tools, Utilities, Windows Tips and Tools

12 responses to “Maintain Your Machine – 10 + 1 Free Computer System Tools

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  5. Azziz

    Those are great utilities. In fact we start to run free tools to maintain the pc. But how they are superior to those who are sharewares. Why sharewares cleans more than freewares. Is there a freeware that is superior than a shareware?

    • Bill Mullins

      Hey Azziz,

      Definitions:

      Shareware- Shareware is software that is distributed free on a trial basis with the understanding that the user may need or want to pay for it later. Shareware is sometimes confused with freeware. Like open source, freeware is truly free — but like shareware, freeware program code is proprietary and the creator retains the copyright.

      There is no clear connection in application functionality between shareware and freeware. It just depends on what the author of the application is prepared to give away.

      Bill

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  9. Great article, i think i’ll put this i my blog. Thank you 🙂

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  11. As a computer techie, I was only aware of ccleaner. Thanks to this article, I now have more free tools to work with.