3 simple tips and tricks for a cleaner, faster PC

 Is your everyday PC’s performance starting to go a bit wrong? You don’t have to panic and start looking online for a replacement or expensive hardware upgrades. You can do plenty of things, some completely free, to increase its speed and save hard drive space. You also don’t need to be a computer expert to do what we’re about to show you. Even if you are familiar with computers, this quick guide could save you a considerable amount of time and effort.

Get rid of built-up junk files

If you’re new to PC cleaner optimization, the concept of ‘built-up junk’ may not mean much, but it’s to do with the way computers work. Browsing the web and using apps builds up hidden junk files that can take up additional space on your hard drive. This issue becomes particularly important if you have a hard drive that’s already near-to-full as it could slow down your computer. Check your hardware specifications. Generally speaking, If you have a solid-state drive (SSD), it’s best to keep 25% of its space free to prevent performance loss. For hard disk drives (HDDs), you’re better off keeping about 15% free.

1. How CCleaner helps you clean junk

CCleaner’s Health Check and Custom Clean features simplify the time-consuming process of finding and deleting system junk. Health Check offers you a simple, straightforward interface with helpful default settings, and Custom Clean gives you a more in-depth view of the types of files you can clean from Windows and third-party apps like web browsers. CCleaner can wipe unnecessary files from your PC Cleaner safely without actually deleting anything you might need. For the best results, we recommend using our app once a week.

2. How to do an easy PC clean with CCleaner 

1. Open CCleaner. You can also download it from here.

2. Select ‘Health Check’ and click ‘Next’ to launch this feature.

3. Follow the step-by-step process in Health Check.

4. Health Check can speed up a slow Windows startup process and update popular apps all in one go. Find out more from this video.

If you already have CCleaner, but you don’t have Health Check, please download the latest version.

Download CCleaner now.

3. What to do if you want an in-depth clean

Custom Clean, another core feature of CCleaner, is perfect for this. Built for more technical users, it allows you to customize your clean so your Best PC is cleaned to a deeper level.

1. Open CCleaner and click on ‘Custom Clean.’

2. Click ‘Analyze’ to scan your PC for junk files across your operating system and apps.

3. If you’re happy with what Custom Clean finds, click ‘Run Cleaner’ to clean it.

4. Custom Clean uses safe default settings for cleaning, but, as the name suggests, you can customize how it cleans too. You can do this via the labeled ‘Windows’ and ‘Applications’ tabs and the different checkboxes shown beneath them. We don’t recommend that you select any checkboxes that you don’t understand.

4. What happens if you clean for the first time (or after a long time)

Sometimes this can be a good thing because a first-time clean could remove up to 4GB of junk files from your Best Free PC cleaner, perhaps even more. Not cleaning after a long period won’t have quite as large an impact, but it will still clear a notable amount of files from your Secure PC Cleaner. Either way, once you run a big clean, any subsequent cleaning operations with CCleaner should be faster. Running a clean with CCleaner once a week usually only takes a few seconds to complete.

5. Has CCleaner been proven to work?

We’ve built CCleaner for speed and efficiency. Passmark, an independent software testing specialist, found that cleaning with CCleaner is 20 times quicker than an experienced IT professional carrying out the same task manually. We’ve put the hard work in, so you don’t need to do it yourself.

Remove unwanted apps

Our PCs get used for all kinds of things: work, emails, social media, web browsing, half-forgotten creative projects, gaming, and more. While multitasking is useful, it isn’t necessarily great news for your computer’s overall performance. Any third-party apps that you downloaded and installed yourself (since you started using your PC) can take up a significant share of your hard drive space. Apps that come as standard with your operating system can have a similar impact, but this is less often the case. As highlighted in the section above, ‘Get rid of built-up junk files,’ your PC can slow down if your hard drive gets filled up to a certain level. So, the same issue applies here, albeit in a slightly different way.

CCleaner allows you to uninstall apps from one place. Overall, this takes less time than using the conventional uninstall method that Windows gives you. You can even use CCleaner to remove default Windows 10 apps that you can’t delete from your PC Cleaner in normal circumstances.

How to uninstall apps with CCleaner

Go to the ‘Uninstall’ tool within CCleaner. 

1. Open CCleaner and go to ‘Tools’

2. Go to ‘Uninstall’ 

3. Click the apps you want to remove

4. Click ‘Uninstall’

We’ve kept it very straightforward!

Disable some startup programs

If you’re not knowledgeable about your Best PC Cleaner, the phrase ‘startup programs’ may not mean a whole lot on the surface, but it’s quite simple. It refers to any apps you have installed on your Free PC Cleaner that are pre-programmed to launch every time you start Windows. If you have many apps on your PC doing this at once, this can result in a slow computer. Luckily, this is something CCleaner can help you with too.

1. How to disable startup programs with Health Check

CCleaner gives you two ways to disable startup programs, but we’ll start with the easiest first. Health Check has an in-built function for this in the Health Check main menu called ‘Speed.’ Click ‘Start Health Check’ to let it find auto-starting apps for you to disable. If it finds anything, click the ‘Make it better’ button, and it will do precisely that (after Health Check runs a scan of your PC). This is a function in Health Check that comes as part of CCleaner Professional, but it can do other things for free, as we’ve shown above.

Compare CCleaner Free to CCleaner Professional.

2. How to disable startup programs with the Startup tool

Here’s how to access and use CCleaner’s ‘Startup’ tool.

1. Open CCleaner and go to ‘Tools’

2. Click on ‘Startup’

3. View the list of the programs

4. Choose the programs you want to disable

5. Click ‘Disable’

3.   What if I’m not sure which programs I can disable?

It’s best to do some online research first to determine which apps are safe to disable. Most third-party apps don’t have a close relationship with your PC and operating system’s core functions, so it is safe to disable these in most cases. For Health Check, you don’t need to be concerned about disabling apps because it operates with simplified default settings, making it faster and easier to use.

4.   What other products does CCleaner have?

For a more in-depth look at CCleaner and our products, why not take a look at the 31 most popular questions about CCleaner? We also have optimization products available for Mac, Android, and our very own secure browser. CCleaner Browser provides a rapid, privacy-focused online browsing experience and even includes some cross-compatibility with our main CCleaner app for PC. Why not try something out from the CCleaner range today?