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Barring the usual one like Windows Defrag and scandisk, I am looking for tools like CCleaner , Duplicate file finder etc (freewares makes me happy. If it’s a OSS executable that can run from a thumbdrive, I am ecstatic)

Edit: Till sometime back X-Teq X-Setup was an invaluable tool for fine tuning. Unfortunately its not a freeware anymore.

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perheps belongs to superuser? – pQd Jul 16 '09 at 9:16
Dupe: superuser.com/questions/5672/… – Jonathan Sampson Jul 17 '09 at 18:39
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migrated from serverfault.com Jul 17 '09 at 18:33

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closed as not constructive by nhinkle♦ Nov 15 '11 at 6:23

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11 Answers

up vote 3 down vote

WinDirStat is fantastic for working out where all the storage went and directing you to the big chunks.

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up vote 3 down vote

  • JkDefragGUI - a freeware defragger that has a U3 version that can run off a thumbdrive. It uses PageDefrag developed by Sysinternals under the hood.

  • Power Defragmenter - a GUI to Sysinternals' Contig, another freeware defragger by the great Mark Russinovich.

  • Process Explorer - the tool to monitor all aspects of what's running. In general, it is your best defense to know what you're running and what's hogging CPU/IO at all times. The great Mark Russinovich is again behind this one.

    I always install Process Explorer, at least for the benefit of having a small box of CPU history in the tray, which shows you if your computer is currently under load or not. I also enable the IO box that shows any kind of IO transfers going on. Here's a screenshot:

    screenshot

Sysinternals utilities in general are very good things to install to figure out what's slowing things down at the lowest level.

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Isn't that process explorer in your screenshot? – FryGuy Jul 9 '09 at 23:46
You're right! Corrected. The names are all too similar. – Artem Russakovskii Jul 16 '09 at 4:42
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up vote 2 down vote

Specifically in the Systinternals suite, autoruns is one of the best WinXP startup/IE startup/etc cleaners out there.

Microsoft's TweakUI is another great tool, you'd be surprised how much performance you can get out of changing options in there.

I mentioned Scanner in the comments to another answer, I generally prefer the sunburst chart to the tree view.

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up vote 1 down vote

I like TreeSize (free; fancier pay versions here) as a way to visualize where disk space is being used. It'll find that 4GB ISO deep in a directory you didn't notice.

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WindDirStat does the same thing. – Jeff Miles May 12 '09 at 16:47
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WinDirStat is free and I prefer it to the free version of TreeSize; the pay version of TreeSize is better still, but costs money – Richard Gadsden May 12 '09 at 16:48
Excellent. Write an answer, get a better answer. :-) – Michael Petrotta May 12 '09 at 17:16
I still prefer the starburst graph from Scanner ( steffengerlach.de/freeware ) to the tree view, even if the tool is a lot older and less featureful. – leander May 12 '09 at 17:45
er, starburst graph -> "sunburst chart" – leander May 12 '09 at 17:48
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up vote 1 down vote

My fave is the good old msconfig. Go to Startup and un-tick everything that's not 100% absolutally for-sure definately absolutally required for your day-to-day work.

Other one is TreeSize Free - fantastic tool for locating bloated folders that you'd forgotten about.

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up vote 1 down vote

SpaceMonger - version 1.4. Graphically represents the size of files and directories on your computer.

SpaceMonger screenshot

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up vote 1 down vote

On my PC, from time to time I launch a small freeware tool simply called "scanner", which shows me where the biggest folders are.

Scanner

A lot of tools do that by displaying squares, but I've always preferred a "radial" look.

This tool needs no installation, and is only a few hundred kilobytes in size.

http://www.steffengerlach.de/freeware/

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up vote 0 down vote

Format!

I'm actually not intending to sound glib or snarky. I used to do a LOT of fiddling with my home system, but in the end I found that I got more pleasure (and performance) out of a clean format/reinstall than any amount of tweaking, poking, or cleaning.

It's also led me to a state of rock-solid organization & backups such that I'm up and running very quickly. That's my clean-system vote, but I like the question. I'm curious to see if some better tools have made "housekeeping" a better option for Windows than it used to be.

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up vote 0 down vote

Rather than fiddling around with:

  • uninstalling old programs,
  • worrying about registry bloat,
  • wiping and reinstalling,
  • re-entering your license key
  • re-activating your Windows operating system

consider ghosting your partition/drive once you get everything installed. Don't go through the unnecessary pain again of downloading the patches (etc) twice a year.

Make yourself a ghost image with the OS as you'd like to be able to have it again as. Heck, make a few images of all kinds of OS installs and application versions!

Keep that ghost image on hand, and when you feel it a bit sluggish, just reimage your machine from the ghost image. Yes, there will be more security fixes since the image's creation. When that does happen, consider re-creating a new ghost image of the newly patched system, in preparation for 6 months down the road when you know it's going to feel sluggish.

Regarding newer versions of browsers, etc.: perhaps those volatile apps shouldn't be installed in your image. Save those for a batch file that you can run to help automate your install of apps in your new shiny OS after you've wiped over.

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up vote 0 down vote

FolderSizes is another excellent disk space analysis tool. Commercial product, but it does MUCH more than WinDirStat (scheduler, file level analysis, robust command line interface, multiple export formats, etc.). Worth the small amount of $$ it costs.

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up vote 0 down vote

The PC Decrapifier - uninstalls many of the common trialware and annoyances found on many of the PCs from big name OEMs.

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