I just started using my laptop again and it feels slower than ever (takes 10 seconds to bring up the start menu). Does anyone know of anexcellent cleaner where it restores my PC like I just bought it? Used CC Cleaner, but it doesn’t get into the deep areas nor the corners. Seen some other ‘legit’ cleaners, but its asking for cash. In order for me to purchase something like a cleaner, I have to see it on billboards, tv, stunt planes, forum signatures, tattoos, flags, and blimps.
Then again, does anyone have a program I could use to clean clean my computer or restore it to factory mode? Thanks.
Typically you won’t find things like that, and I can’t say I know of anything that would do that without having massive amounts of corruption involved.
Your best bet is to just back up all your useful files, and then wipe the drive and reinstall Windows.
Lol what? While it is true that a lot of cleaners don’t work as advertised, completely wiping your drive is ridiculous.
Windows may slow over time, but there are many things you can do to help speed it back up.
I’ll write up a quick guide for you, just follow it as you go.
Start Up Items:
Hit the start button and type msconfig into your run bar and then hit enter
Go to Startup and hit disable all at the bottom
Hit Services and then click on “Hide all Microsoft services” at the bottom
Hit Disable all
Hit apply and OK
Defragmentation
Click on the start menu
Click on All Programs
Scroll down and click on Accessories
Click on the System Tools folder
Click on Disc Defragmentation
Choose the discs to be analyzed or defragmented.
Worm/Malware:
If your PC is lagging behind it may also be due to malware or a worm taking up your CPU resources
Download malware bytes
turn off your PC and go into safe mode (usually pressing f8 on the start up, it will say)
Start up malware bytes and run a scan
Remove malware
You can also use the disc clean up tool also found in System Tools to help remove unused programs to free up disc space, although that probably won’t help a ton with speed. Also try to remove unused or unwanted extensions on your browser to speed them up.
If your PC is having a slow start up the first part I typed will most likely do the most.
For the exact thing that he wants “where it restores [his] PC like [he] just bought it” that would be the only way.
Cleaning and Defragging can only go so far.
He will see significant speed increases after a full on reset, as the registry will be far lighter, less inconsequential programs will be running, less files in both programdata and appdata, and it will be all around cleaner.
Only takes a few hours to get things set back up anyways.
Complete waste of time. There is no reason to completely wipe your hard drive for system performance. I highly doubt you would even see a notable performance increase even in most cases. You can always speed up your PC in other ways that will have a much larger effect than that.
I’ve seen large increases in performance after a reset on many different computers, and that was after looking into alternatives beforehand (like cleaning / defragging / antivirus). I’ve seen far greater results from just doing a reset.
Then odds are you had one of the three following issues:
You had malware on your computer that was slowing it down
You had programs that were unneeded and were taking up resources
Your computer was older than it should be and is using more resources heavy software
Despite the idea that your computer slows down over time for no particular reason and that the only way to speed up your OS is to reinstall, that isn’t really true. Your computer slows down because of you. You need to do maintenance on your computer occasionally to keep it up to speed and know exactly what is running and what you are installing. You also need to know that slower computers will not run like they used to because the software being used is not what it used to be. Software over time becomes more and more resource heavy and it will act as such. Slow computers are due to the user, not the computer.
-Never said from no reason, in fact I stated the opposite.
-Not from malware when I even said from doing the alternatives first.
-Done this many, many times with many different types of PCs.
-Installing all typically used software back on those same computers, and they still had better performance.
-Not basing this off of nothing, but basing it off of what I have seen.
Well I can 100% assure you that your hard drive didn’t magically ramp up the RPMs nor did your software become magically lighter. It was user error that you couldn’t find.
Less inconsequential programs, less mess, less outdated garbage files – nowhere said “magically”.
Edit:
Wow, two pages of this, and you keep at it by claiming that I keep saying things like it just happened out of nowhere. Done with this discussion, it’s not getting anywhere.
I know what I have done and seen, and you can continue choosing to ignore everything but your own opinion.
On topic here, you probably have a lot of unnecessary startup programs. If your on Windows 7 and below press the windows key and R sequentially and type in msconfig and go to the startup tab and unchecked anything you don’t ABSOLUTELY need. If on Windows 8 or above just open the task manager and click more info and there will be a startup tab there. As for personal cleaning I use 360 total security and it’s been an amazing and FREE program.
Doing a fresh install of windows does actually speed up the performance of your pc actually if it’s really old and been used alot. And that’s not down to having malware or other forms of unwanted malicious code. Not going to explain to you why ill let you go figure that out.
At OP just back up all your important files, music, videos, pics, documents the usual stuff and go over the things you have installed. Then decide what stuff you actually need or want in the installed programs so when you do a fresh install only install those programs. Once they are all installed do as advised to go into Msconfig and disable all items at startup in the list then hide all non MS services and disable them.
This just prevents programs running and starting with/along the OS when it boots and while it operates. You will have to manually run programs however and they might take slightly longer to start up but your laptop should boot up and run quicker doing this!
In CCleaner, the third tab is called “Tools”. Go here.
Now navigate to “Startup”. Disable/delete all necessary entries.
Other than that, I would just uninstall unnecessary programs you have. Something I read is that you shouldn’t let your hard drive become any more than 50% full or else the read/write times become a lot slower. I don’t remember the rationale but I do remember it making sense. So… take it or leave it.
So, that’s what I do when I want to clean up my PC.