I have found a program a few years back that is really friendly user and since then I bought their 2013 and 2015 versions. It was Tuneup Utilities now AVG Tuneup Utilities. Is it sufficient to keep your files in order? What do you think? I have also downloaded the free Malwarebytes program since I had an issue only once (in like 4 years of usage).
I am buying my first rig and now waiting for the CPU and the RAM. I chose a 250Gb SSD and I've seen some topics talking about the unnecessary storage that the OS adds in so... how do you guys clean up and keep your hard drives sharp? Among those topics I can't really remember but it was about the ram and a ''file'' that could be deleted so it won't use your cache memory. Am I wrong? :S
I've spent alot for my first build so i'll wait a little to upgrade and get a TB HDD. Since then I want to profit my SSD for it's maximum capacity. :)
Well when I was on Windows the best method was not to install anything unless you had to have it. Keeps the machine clean as it could be. If you want to check stuff out do it in a VM.
Im on Linux now and no Windows 10 head aches except for inside VM's
AVG is becoming more malware by the year from what I see. It was free and nice several years ago but now well I find it iffy.
I use ccleaner, malwarebytes pro, and auslogics disk defrag. With the defraging I disable windows defrag and set the auslogics defrag to the new default.
CC cleaner is probably a good choice but as it was mentioned before, you must be very careful where you install things from and do not add anything on the system unless you know where it comes from and you absolutely needed. Keeping a system clean is more on the user than a good anti-virus and cleaning program. Maybe keeping a windows VM for testing stuff you are not sure about is a good idea.
Also keep you browser as clean as possible and always use things like https everywhere and ublock plugins.
Personally the only way I found is to use windows as little as possible, thus i only use them for games at this point.
This isn't for everyone obviously. But essentially it's like this. If the machine was fast when it was brand new , why would you ever alter it from it's new configuration?
You have to be very on top of every file you download , and clone your main drive a lot and always keep restore points. And always know what you are downloading. But results don't lie. My installation is over 2 years old and works better than a lot of brand new computers I've used.
When you let a machine constantly update the OS , it creates a failure point in the stability of the machine , being the updates. With updates off , the updates cannot effect the machine in any way , with them on , they can. So you effectively make the machine less reliable , because it's less consistent.
In my opinion regular reinstalls of Windows is a good idea. I find it helps me trim the fat on things I think I need, but really don't. This is especially true when it comes to software.
Come up with a solid directory structure to store all your data so it is easy to copy to USB before reinstalling. Reinstalling Windows is pretty easy compared to how it used to be and takes a fraction of the time.
I generally don't install junk at all on my PC, anything that doesn't serve a function gets removed manually. I know there are people who can't seem to help but install ad-bars and other junk, its almost as if they can't see the tell tale signs of such things when they go through the install process. However I can spot that injected junk from a mile away so it never causes me a issue.
I hate that freakin Java now is recommending that you download and install yahoo toolbar and you set yahoo as your default home page... fml. As if having to install Java isn't annoying enough as it is!