Windows Maintenance
Cleaners
CCleaner
CCleaner and all other cleaners can be very destructive. The use of these to clean excessively can lead to increase wear on SSDs when temp file are constantly being written and deleted.
The use of any registry 'cleaner' can also be detrimental to a machine there is never a good reason to 'clean' a registry, it is not a source of load on the system in any way.
Driver finders
All applications are PUPs
We do not recommend any driver finder applications, this list includes but is not limited to:
- Snappy Driver Installer
- IObit DriverBooster
- Driver Easy
Windows can natively handle most drivers during install, or directly from Device Manager. If you are seeking to update drivers outside of Windows Device Manager only seek them online from the motherboard, laptop, or GPU manufacturers support page.
Defrag
Only use Windows built-in tools
All third party tools, such as defraggler, are considered PUPs
Advanced Uninstallers
Revo Uninstaller
This is one of the few maintenance tools we can recommend, and it is for a specific need. If you ever have an app break and continue to misbehave after a reinstall you may need to clear out more items than Windows natively does.
Running this tool can clear residual configuration files and registry entries. The registry cleanup on this application has the same warning as ccleaner, it can break the OS if something goes wrong.