Ccleaner, which certainly does not need further advertising, is one of the most reliable and powerful maintenance programs for Windows, capable of cleaning the disk and erasing traces of temporary data, obsolete files and invalid registry keys without creating problems of stability to the system. Everything works very simply, by pressing two buttons in the program interface. However, Ccleaner also hides a variety of features and tricks that are worth writing about. therefore we will see where to find the most useful tools, automate the cleaning processes and how to expand the search for junk files. In this article we will then show you how to use Ccleaner to clean your PC from unnecessary files and take advantage of all the hidden functions of this great little software to optimize Windows
How to clean your PC
In this part of the guide we will show you how to clean your computer, using the two modes offered by CCleaner: one simple (suitable for less experienced users), the other complete (suitable for more advanced users).
If we have not yet downloaded the program, we can do it from the official CCleaner website, taking care to select the Free download button, the Download button and finally choose whether to download the file from Filehippo.com or directly from the CCleaner.com website.
During the installation, it is better to press the Customize button to customize some initial options and, if desired, avoid adding Ccleaner to the right-click options in the basket and to disable the Cookie Scan.
How to carry out a simple cleaning
To start a simple cleaning of the computer, we start the program, select the Simple Cleaning menu at the top left, then click in the center on Analyze to start the analysis of all areas of the PC where it is possible to find unnecessary files or files that can be removed without problems.
Before the analysis, we advise you to close any open programs, especially web browsers. At the end we click on Clean all to clean, quickly and painlessly, the useless files and tracer cookies on the computer. If we wanted to analyze the files found by the scan, just click on View the tracer files and on Examine the residual files .
How to carry out a complete cleaning
If we want to clean our computer more thoroughly and examine all the files, open the program and click on the Advanced Cleaning menu, located at the top left.
The classic CClener menu will open, where you can activate the items and programs to be scanned to clean the cache and eliminate the residual files on the system (by scrolling the items on the Windows and Applications tabs).
After selecting the files, click on Analyze at the bottom to start a scan; when finished we click on Start Cleaning to clean our system of all unnecessary files.
Include files and programs folders to the cleaning list
If you use a program that is not included in the CCleaner application list, or you want a folder to be emptied regularly, you can add them to the cleanup rules of Ccleaner. To add a custom folder, open the Options section and use them on the Include tab. Be careful, however, to add folders or files to this list otherwise important data may be deleted.By downloading an additional file, you can add new cleaning rules to Ccleaner quickly and easily.
Exclude files
Likewise, if CCleaner were to delete something that you don't want to delete, you can create an exception and specify a folder as an exclusion. You can exclude an entire disk, a folder, a file or a single registry key.Then go to Options -> Exclusions and add folders or files that should not be touched in any way.
Safely delete files
You can safely delete files using the Cleaner erase tool on every file that is erased from Windows. In options -> settings, you can select the type of Secure deletion with one-step overwriting, however taking into account that, in this way, each deletion will be slower. This option is only useful for privacy reasons.Other useful features of CCleaner
In addition to the cleaning functions, CCleaner offers other interesting features, all useful for optimizing the startup and use of the Windows operating system.Registry cleaning
By going to the Registry menu, on the left side, we can start a scan of the registry, looking for unnecessary and orphaned entries present in it. Once all the items to be scanned have been selected, click on Find problems and then on Repair selected problems .Even though Ccleaner is very careful and reliable, registry cleaners can accidentally remove important keys thus causing system damage.
A wider discussion was made in the article "Registry Cleaner: more problems than benefits".
Uninstall apps and programs
By going to Tools -> Uninstallation, we can choose which apps and programs to uninstall from the operating system. If some programs got stuck and we can no longer remove their entry from the system, we can also use the Repair or Delete button, so that we can always clean the program management system.Update programs
By going to Tools -> Software Updater, we can check which programs need to be updated on our computer, so that we can update them all together (just press the Update all button).Startup management, context menu and Windows services
By going to Tools -> Startup, we will be able to check the processes in auto-start and eliminate unwanted items (in the Windows tab), check and delete scheduled processes (in the Scheduled processes tab), activate and deactivate the items of the contextual menu of Windows ( in the Contextual Menu tab) and finally check the Windows services managed in auto-start (in the Windows Services tab).By deactivating the right items, we will be able to gain speed in starting the system and running programs, without having to use other programs to speed up Windows.
Browser plugins control
To avoid that some plugins can be added to browsers, slowing them down, let's go to Tools -> Browser Plugins and in the various tabs (one for each browser on the PC), we can disable the plugins that we consider superfluous or even harmful to the computer.Analyze the disc
If we do not know which files take up the most space on our disk, go to Tools -> Disk Analysis, select the type of file to be scanned, the drive to be scanned and finally click on Analyze to find out all the heaviest files present on the computer.Find duplicates
By going to Tools -> Find duplicates, we can start a search for duplicate files on your PC, selecting the various scan options and clicking Search . Among the parameters, the possibility to search for a precise file, with a precise size or present in a given path, stand out.System Restore Management
System recovery files can be very large, taking up a good portion of the hard disk space. By going to Tools -> System Restore, we can manage all the restores present on the computer, deleting the older ones (at least 2-3 months old). In this way we will gain a lot of space to devote to files and programs.Erase discs
We need to resell a hard drive but we don't want the files it contains to be recovered with advanced recovery tools "> Erase the free disk space and make the files unrecoverable".Schedule cleaning with Ccleaner
As seen in another guide, you can perform an automatic disk cleaning with Ccleaner by creating a new shortcut on the desktop with the command C: \ Program Files \ CCleaner \ CCleaner.exe / AUTO / SHUTDOWN which, when pressed, turns off the computer doing file cleaning.Exclude important cookies
CCleaner deletes all cookies by default, but, as mentioned above, it would be better to keep them to avoid the loss of customized configurations of the most visited websites. While leaving the Cookies selected in the cleaning rules, go to the Options screen and choose which cookies to keep. For example, cookies from sites like Google.it, Facebook.com, Navigaweb.net or other favorite sites can be moved to the right column by selecting them and pressing the arrow button.Conclusions
CCleaner remains without a shadow of a doubt the most complete free program to be able to clean our PC, without having to ask ourselves every time why the PC slows down and does not recover even with several restarts. Even if some functions are offered for a fee (for example, the cleaning schedule), all the free tools are really useful to keep Windows always fast and snappy, even at startup.Those who have never used it, can download the latest version of Ccleaner from the official website.
However, if we are looking for alternatives to CCleaner, we can find them reviewed in our guide to Alternatives to Ccleaner to clean up Windows . If, on the other hand, we want to use the power of CCleaner also to clean our Android smartphone, we recommend reading the guide Download Ccleaner for Android to clean the cache .
Here below, a video in Italian that I found on Youtube, a bit long, but that really talks about all the functions of Ccleaner in a detailed way.
