Computer Help and Support

steve2470

(37,457 posts) Tue Dec 19, 2017, 12:41 PM Dec 2017

PC Cleaning Apps are a Scam: Heres Why (and How to Speed Up Your PC)

https://www.howtogeek.com/162683/pc-cleaning-apps-are-a-scam-heres-why-and-how-to-speed-up-your-pc/

(as usual, I'm only posting this for discussion. IT people can critique it)

PC cleaning apps are digital snake oil. The web is full of ads for applications that want to “clean your PC” and “make it feel like new.” Don’t pull out your credit card — these apps are terrible and you don’t need them.

If you do want to “clean your PC,” you can do it for free. Windows includes built-in PC cleaning tools that can do almost all of what the average PC cleaning app will do for you.

So what do these apps do, anyway? To investigate, we ran MyCleanPC — don’t try this at home; we installed this bad software so you don’t have to. MyCleanPC is one of the most prominent PC cleaning apps — it even advertises itself with television commercials.

First, let’s look at its Frequently Asked Questions to see what it promises:

more at link above

2 replies

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PC Cleaning Apps are a Scam: Heres Why (and How to Speed Up Your PC) (Original Post) steve2470 Dec 2017 OP

Windows PCs used to practically obsolesce themselves. forgotmylogin Dec 2017 #1

PCs run slowly mostly because of malware/spyware/adware IronLionZion Dec 2017 #2

forgotmylogin

(7,530 posts)

1. Windows PCs used to practically obsolesce themselves.

Reply to steve2470 (Original post)

Tue Dec 19, 2017, 01:15 PM

Dec 2017

I won't conspiracize that this was on purpose, but they would run slower and slower as malware accumulated and RAM was filled with unnecessary programs on boot, and the registry could seemingly get senile. People didn't know how to maintain Windows systems, and they weren't designed to prevent this without human interaction and maintenance that many people didn't learn.

Most who didn't know better just thought they needed a new PC almost every year because the current one "got old" and didn't work as well.

Modern Windows is a lot better. MacOS has always been more efficient and I think Microsoft took a lot of cues from them.

IronLionZion

(45,452 posts)

2. PCs run slowly mostly because of malware/spyware/adware

Reply to steve2470 (Original post)

Tue Dec 19, 2017, 03:45 PM

Dec 2017

Registry cleaning is not only unnecessary, it can also cause more problems that you can't fix. It's best to not mess with the registry at all.

Be wary of extra addons like free browser toolbars and other stuff bundled with many software installers. These can often slow things down considerably while the developer might honestly believe they are helping you somehow.

A good practice is to go through everything installed on a PC, google it if you don't know what something is, and uninstall stuff you don't need. That can speed up things a lot, especially if they are set to start at boot time and run in the background.

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