Question Cleaning an older PC

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Vanz_000

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Nov 30, 2023
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Hi,

Was wondering what you all do to speed up and clean (software cleaning) an older PC?

I used to run CC cleaner but now I feel it has too many adds, is slow and is bundled with other stuff I don’t want.

What I currently do:
1. Run Disk Cleanup from windows, clean system files then check all the other boxes of stuff to clean
2. Right click on Drive -> Properties -> Tool
a. Run Error Checking
b. Run Defrag
3. Delete contents of this folder “C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution\Download”
4. Settings ->System -> Storage -> "FREE UP SPACE NOW" or Delete Temp files
5. At CMD prompt type “sfc /scannow”

What else? Any other suggestions, programs or recommendations would be appreciated.

Thanks,

Vanz
 
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Lutfij said:
CCleaner was backlisted by Microsoft, if you didn't know. It did cause Windows 10 OS to go belly up after you ran the app.

I merely make sure Defragmentation is turned off, that drive's are cleared using Disk Cleanup.
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what do you by "Defragmentation is turned off", I have not done this before, does windows do some kind of auto defragmentation on us?

"drive's are cleared using Disk Cleanup."
That's it?
 
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geofelt said:
You don't want to defrag a ssd.
I don't bother cleanup unless I am running out of space or have some issue that it might fix.
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my wife's and parent's (hers and mine) have computers that are 5+ years old, some 10+ years old, so their machines get quite slow and clogged. I clean them with the above and then they run okay for awhile but then they bug me again... 🙁

Basically, I want to make a guide that is easy to follow, so that they will stop bugging me and they can clean their PC's themselves
 
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USAFRet said:
Pc's don't really slow down, due to hardware.

The software is almost always the issue.

If they are now "slower" than before, it could be due to a whole host of things running in the background. Or malware.
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yup, but like I mentioned above, usually after I do the cleaning routing I outlined above they are happy and the PC runs fine again for a fairly long time, so I'm pretty sure it is software related... I dont think its that much related to malware, as I tell them to often run Windows Defender virus scan and Malwarebytes is installed on all the machines and they run it often, occasionally they do catch some malare though...
 
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Vanz_000 said:
Hi,

Was wondering what you all do to speed up and clean (software cleaning) an older PC?

I used to run CC cleaner but now I feel it has too many adds, is slow and is bundled with other stuff I don’t want.

What I currently do:
1. Run Disk Cleanup from windows, clean system files then check all the other boxes of stuff to clean
2. Right click on Drive -> Properties -> Tool
a. Run Error Checking
b. Run Defrag
3. Delete contents of this folder “C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution\Download”
4. Settings ->System -> Storage -> "FREE UP SPACE NOW" or Delete Temp files
5. At CMD prompt type “sfc /scannow”

What else? Any other suggestions, programs or recommendations would be appreciated.

Thanks,

Vanz
Click to expand...
I use ccleaner and don't see any adds you might want to look through the options and see what you have enabled.

Slow? when I click on run it takes a few secs and then it's done.
If your running off a hdd consider a swap for a ssd.
 
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I second the recommend to wipe and reinstall. Also, set up user levels such that the people having problem with malware and such cannot install without a password. You should not have uninformed users with the authority to install anything. It is far less convenient, but also far safer.

Given the age of these machines I would also recommend mentioning to your user base not to store or perform any transactions (bank) type use on those you called out as being ~10yo.
 
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There seems to be a popular misconception here that Windows does not defrag SSDs.

Since Windows 8, Windows has indeed defragged SSDs once a month if System Restore and thus volsnap is enabled to speed up Volume Shadow Copies. There's more on that here in the main FAQ for the defrag command. By default, Windows including 11 also runs TRIM on SSDs once a week and doesn't allow you to manually defrag, only TRIM ("Optimize").

Note that Windows never checks to see if you have removed the SSD, such as if you have cloned a SSD install to a HDD. So to get your manual defrag back, you have to manually re-run Windows Experience Index .. which was easy in earlier Windows (just click "re-run the assessment") but hidden in modern Windows so do it like so:
Open an administrative command prompt and run
winsat formal
Windows will then recognize the HDD and let you run defragmenter manually on it again

Once a month does not appreciably reduce the lifespan of a SSD and rewriting data to cells that have been untouched for too long is something the SSD controller performs anyway to ensure data integrity. Any cells that have been rewritten recently by defragging will obviously be exempt from this normal and required drive maintenance. There will be some cells that defrag does not touch, because since Windows Vista Microsoft decided that it was not worth consolidating fragmented blocks larger than 64MB anymore--which had been done in XP's defrag. So the drive's firmware will still have to keep track of and rewrite those cells, so the charge level in them doesn't degrade far enough for data loss to occur.


As for CCleaner, it was bought by Avast which was bought by Norton years ago. And for more than 30 years, everything Norton touches eventually turns to poo.
 
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BFG-9000 said:
As for CCleaner, it was bought by Avast which was bought by Norton years ago. And for more than 30 years, everything Norton touches eventually turns to poo.
Click to expand...

Thanks BFG-9000... is anyone using another cleaning program, other than CCleaner?

Is CCleaner regarded as a good program for cleaning up older PC's?

Maybe I need to give it another try, although hearing it was bought by Norton makes me nervous, I would suspect they will try to sneak in a Norton Antivirus install on users...
 
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punkncat said:
I second the recommend to wipe and reinstall. Also, set up user levels such that the people having problem with malware and such cannot install without a password. You should not have uninformed users with the authority to install anything. It is far less convenient, but also far safer.

Given the age of these machines I would also recommend mentioning to your user base not to store or perform any transactions (bank) type use on those you called out as being ~10yo.
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well that would be nice, but please understand these are old PC's with my parents and grandparents and siblings (and my wife's family), if I did a complete wipe I would really be opening up a potential can of worms and headaches.

They are not good at remembering old passwords or even where they kept their old software. So, its not like me or you wiping our own PC and knowing what we want on it and remembering all our old passwords... a fresh wipe, honestly scares me in terms of how much time and effort I would probably have to invest...

I think installing something like CCleaner (or something else?) and giving them as few instructions as possible is the way to go.

Also, even if I did a complete wipe on 10+ machines, the problem would then exist again in a year to two...

"You should not have uninformed users with the authority to install anything."

It's their machines, I can't really dictate terms like this. I could set some kind of ultimatum where I don't touch their machines unless they do certain things, but really I'm just trying to be nice and help them out, which I've done many times in the past, but am getting tired of it and want to help them help themselves...
 
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I mean such as actually requiring a password to install anything. If they are admin accounts on these PC then anything that comes along can install with the highest authority. I would set them up as "regular users" and set UAC to medium. Teach them about what the pop ups from that mean - you know in a very basic sense along the lines of if you didn't try to install something and this pops up, give me a call type thing.

Heck, if you are feeling brave, give them the admin password but create separate accounts such that normal user is browsing and day to day and admin is specific to when they want to install something they are aware they are doing.

I feel your pain in that I had a similar issue with my mother. Having an older laptop it always took its time to do most tasks anyway and on top of it such as normal updating really crippled it for desktop experience. I purchased her a new W11 machine and its capability alone helped a lot with perceived issues.

I do wish you the best with this as it can be quite aggravating.
 
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Vanz_000 said:
By the way, thanks all for the comments and suggestions so far, really appreciated!

V
Click to expand...

it be handy to know the exact spec of the machines.

full use for them.

i will say this if they game alot that will wear down the drives faster the best way to avoid this is the following

1 drive is dedicated to the os
2. drive is dedicated to only the games.

the reason to do this is as follows 1. less writes done to the main drive will keep the drive healthy.

use programs like crystal disk info
https://apps.microsoft.com/detail/xp8k4rgx25g3gm?hl=en-gb&gl=US

to check health of drives
 
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