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It may be
too early for spring cleaning of your ranch, but it's
never too soon to clean your hard drive. Instead of
buckets of detergent, squeegees and lint-free rags, the
PC version, aptly named "Spring Cleaning,"
will help you rid your PC of unneeded files, Internet
detritus, stray Registry entries and other pesky files
you don't need and are probably responsible for slowing
you to a crawl.
This
program has been around the better part of a decade, yet
it ran just fine on my Windows 7 system. After a quick
install, you're prompted to reboot. After that, you can
go out and run a 10K or two while it scans your system
and builds a database of everything on your hard drive.
This is important, because one of its features is
ferreting out duplicate files and folders.
The main
program is divided among Internet, APPS (as in
applications), Registry, Disk Cleaner and Size. You
probably won't use the latter, since today's hard drives
allow for huge folders anyway.
The
Internet section lets you choose which cookies you want
to delete and which you want to keep (some cookies
actually do make your surfing a bit easier), and it
cleans up your cache and browsing history. The Registry
section will run a program that will find problems in
the miles of computer code that make up your Registry
files, repair them, clean up unneeded entries and,
finally, for the brave, allow you to edit the registry.
An
uninstall program will get rid of all files that program
added to your hard drive, and you can actually move an
application to a portable drive or another PC. If you
change your mind about uninstalling a program, you can
reinstall it using the Restore program.
There's
also a disk cleaner and duplicate file finder that can
be customized to search out unique file extensions, such
as temporary ones that were left over from application
installations.
Many of
these features are available from within Windows or your
browser's tools menu. Still, for people who prefer an
easier way to handle cleanup chores, "Spring
Cleaning" has all the utilities you need to do the
job.
"Spring
Cleaning" will run on all versions of Windows and
Mac PCs. To order, send
$15
, plus
$6
for shipping, to WashingtonCD, PO Box 351531,
Los Angeles, Calif.
90035, or online at www.washingtoncd.net.
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