I had heard that CCleaner had moved into the dark side since being acquired by Avast but this was the first time I’d witnessed proof of that firsthand.

Personally, I haven’t used CCleaner for years and when I downloaded the free portable version for comparison purposes while compiling this article, the very first thing that happened, on the initial run, was a popup advertising the commercial edition… disappointing: That still holds true today and I guess CCleaner’s reputation for safety is what keeps people using it. However, I proved through a series of articles back in 2012 that just about any other free drive cleaner does a better job than CCleaner. The Deep Clean option requires the professional version of the program.ĪSC works in Windows 11, Windows 10, Windows 8, Windows 7, Windows Vista, and Windows XP. We tested v16 in Windows 11.For many years CCleaner has been the ubiquitous free drive cleaner, trusted and used by millions of people worldwide. Choose Select All a couple of times to clear out all the checkboxes, and then choose Registry Clean followed by SCAN. To run the registry cleaning process, choose Manual Mode from the Care tab. All the features that are offered can be overwhelming and get in your way. One thing we don’t like is that if you’re after a particular cleaning type, like registry cleaning, you must first uncheck all the other options. Moreover, you could actually shut down or restart your PC when the cleaning is finished, so you don’t have to worry about it. Advanced SystemCare is great for the non-tech-savvy because you don’t even have to view the results to repair them. We find the registry scan to be very quick, regardless of the number of errors the program finds. Registry Clean is the utility within it that does the registry cleaning. Must uncheck all other options before scanning the registry.Īdvanced SystemCare Free is one of IObit’s many freeware programs.

Disk cleaner portable