This article lists the main tools required for ensuring PC performance is as efficient as possible. These tools allow the user to freely enjoy trying-out freeware without getting the system clogged-up and prone to crashing.
I have lovingly patched and re-patched my home-built PC (both H/W and S/W) over the years and I can proudly say it is still going strong. I started building PCs back in the days when building a PC was a financially viable alternative to buying a complete package. I now enjoy upgrading and maintaining it purely as a hobby. I’m sure you can relate.
I’m sure you can also relate to my enjoyment in trying and testing freeware S/W utilities. However, after several installs and uninstalls, this inevitably leads to the PC getting sluggish and prone to being unstable and inevitably blue screening. In the early days I found myself reformatting and reinstalling Windows fairly regularly – loosing several months’ worth of configuration.
Over the years I have put together a collection of software utilities which allows me to experiment with freeware while ensuring my system is kept in a highly tuned and efficient state. Here are the choice picks which have helped me to get out of the cycle of reinstalling Windows...
· Revo Uninstaller: A quality free utility which is used as an alternative to Windows’ Control Panel tool for uninstalling software. Revo’s software forensically cleanses the system by completely removing all traces of the software package the user wishes to be removed.
· SI Meter: There are several free system monitors out there but this one is a neat little system monitor which is unobtrusive, highly configurable and intuitive. This has proven very useful for identifying bottlenecks in my hardware.
· IObit Smart Defrag: A great find. It is a general rule with PCs that the bottleneck is the I/O speeds. This free defrag tool not only does a much better job of defragging than Windows’ built-in utility, it also intelligently organises data so that relevant blocks of information are neighbouring each other.
· OverDisk: This free utility is a disk usage browser – very handy if you find your disk space utilisation being much higher than you would expect. This tool graphically depicts where storage is being used and by what.
· Process Explorer & Windows Defender: These free Windows tools are useful additions to my toolset.
Finally, the tool you really need is a registry cleaner. The two main candidates I have found are: Registry Easy and RegTool.
In much the same way as there are free aniti-virus tools but you’d much prefer a quality proprietary solution; the same is true for registry cleaners so either of these solutions is well worth purchasing.
Windows’ Regedit tool makes the registry dangerous accessible. Undoing an erroneous manual change in the registry can be very difficult to trace and correct. Based on my experience I would advice staying out of the registry and buying one of the professional registry cleaners.
I thoroughly recommend getting either Registry Easy or RegTool
