I got a lot of great feedback from the post about my top 5 favorite programs, and I have even noticed a bunch of hits coming from google. I figured I would continue the series with my top 5 favorite maintainance programs.
1. Antivirus – Avast and AVG (Tie)
Its very hard to pick between these two programs. I have used a whole mess of antivirus programs including Nortons, McAfee, Panda, as well as these two. On my PC I am using Avast! mainly because when I first started beta testing Vista, Avast! was the only antivirus available that supported the 64bit operating system. AVG was my choice when I used Windows XP and still is my choice on my laptop which is running XP Home edition. I was quickly turned on to these programs when, after having Nortons for years, installing these and finding tha norton’s missed viruses. Also both use very low resources, and have no bloatware. Daily updates are also an awesome feature.
AVG Antivirus
2. CCleaner (aka “Crap Cleaner”)
Lets face it, the more your browse the internet, themore you use the computer, the more garbage is collected. The guys over at Piriform developed a wonderful, small program that at the click of the button will rid your PC of unwanted temporary files, clean out any downloaded files and cookies, and clear out all search forms. I can guaruntee that the first time you run this program you will free up more than 100MB of space and will see better performance out of your PC. This program is a staple on any PC that I run or maintain.
Piriform CCleaner
3. Spybot Search & Destroy
I am sure by now everyone has used, heard of, or even seen read about Spybot. Being one of the best free spyware cleaners around, it is a must to have this on your system, especially if you are accessing the internet on a daily basis. Spybot performs an extensive scan of your PC lettng you know of any and all cases of spyware and allowing you to remove them at the click of a button. Immunization adds protection to your internet browsers to prevent any future spyware attacks to enter your PC.
Spybot
4. O&O Defrag
I have been in the market for a really nice set of defragmentation software, and finally found the winner here with O&O Defrag. This program provides various different defragmentation options, auto defrag, and scheduled defragmetation. O&O also provides various different types of defragmentation that can benefit your Hard Disks, your HDD Indexes (also known as MFT), as well as analyze your disks to let you know exactly what is causing heavy fragmentation. Albiet defrags take a few hours even on my Raid0 Raptor drives, it is very extensive, and very powerful. Although this program is not free, if you have some spare change, I suggest you pick this up for optimum system health
O&O Disk Defrag
5. Wise Registry Cleaner
Although CCleaner provides a registry cleaner, I personally never found it to be powerful enough for the most demanding computers. Wise Registry Cleaner is a program I came across within the last year. Its a free, fast, and powerful registry cleaner. Wise allows you to scan your computers registry for errors, make a backup, and warns you which entries are safe to fix, and which are not. At the click of a button you can fix all entries that are safe to fix leaving behind questionable entries until further updates. For a free program, this program is again, another staple on PC’s that I own.
Wise Registry Cleaner
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