However, you can download free versions of all three separately. The Professional Plus version includes another three Piriform programs: Defraggler disk defragmentation software, the Recuva file recovery program, and Speccy, which provides a very good inventory of your PC hardware and peripherals. Of course, Piriform would like you upgrade to its paid-for Professional and Professional Plus editions. It didn’t produce any noticeable improvements, but at least it didn’t do any harm.ĬCleaner also includes a disk analyser, a duplicate file finder, and a drive wiper. (You can unselect things you want to keep.) It also includes a non-aggressive registry cleaner, which I tried just to see what it did. The free version does a good job clearing out temporary files, log files, cookies, memory dumps and so on. I’ve been recommending CCleaner for around a decade, so it has stood the test of time. When downloading any freeware, always watch out for unwanted “foistware” that may be bundled with the program you want. Otherwise, my current preference is to download specific tools only when you need them. If you want one, Piraform’s CCleaner Free does the job well enough for most people. ParetoLogic’s PC Health Advisor may be a reputable product – I’ve never used it – but you don’t really need it, and you don’t need to pay $50 a year (or whatever) for a clean-up program. This kind of marketing puts people off the whole category, and as a result, even reputable programs suffer. The problem is that they can find hundreds or even thousands of “errors” and then ask for money to complete the clean-up. Tune-up and optimisation programs could still be useful, because they provide a lot of tools in one handy package. This is the case in the area where it really matters: browsers. Also, many third-party programs have their own update systems.

However, I’ve never seen any evidence that registry cleaners provide benefits, and they can be harmful. The main things it lacks are a registry cleaner and a way to check third-party programs to see if they need updating.

Its new Task Manager provides a simple way to control what your PC loads at start-up. Windows 10 already includes a disk clean-up program and an add/remove programs utility, plus some monitoring and disk defragmentation routines. Another option is to restore from a back-up made before any problems appeared. Today, Windows 10 looks after itself pretty well, and the simplest “tune up” is to go to the Recovery section of the Settings app and choose “Reset this PC”.

Tune-up programs enjoyed some success in the boom years from Windows 95 to XP, when hardware was slower and optimisation might make a difference. Do I still need paid-for software like ParetoLogic’s PC Health Advisor with Windows 10 Pro? Ludo

Avg tuneup vs ccleaner