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cleaning posts

Filed under: Utilities, Windows, Freeware

Deskcretary automatically tidies up cluttered Windows desktops

My worst Windows habit? Indiscriminantly downloading new files and dumping screen captures onto my desktop. When things start to get too messy, I'll go on a wholesale deleting spree or chuck everything extraneous into a single folder and bury it in the recesses of my d: drive.

Enter Deskcretary, a free app which claims to be the "most advanced Windows desktop cleanup software ever."

When you first launch the program, Deskcretary will step you through some initial setting screens - files that you want to exempt from cleaning, compression level, copy and replace policies. At the end of the process, you'll be asked to set an archiving schedule. Daily, weekly, and monthly jobs are supported, or you can turn off scheduling completely and run things manually.

The most clever feature is the Deskcretary Explorer, which allows you to browse previous archives. Jobs are cataloged by date and there's a built-in search feature which yields quick, accurate results.

I'd love to be able to change the location of the archive folder, but I'm not going to complain about the fact that Deskcretary plops it on the desktop. After all, that's where all my clutter was ending up anyway. Renaming would be a nice option, too - perhaps we'll see that in a future version.

Filed under: Security, Utilities, Windows, Productivity, Freeware, Lists

6 free Windows programs to fix and prevent PC problems on your own

Yesterday I wrote up a little list of things I wished people would quit installing on their PCs. Today, I've put together a selection of handy programs those same people can use to take care of some of the annoyances I mentioned - and more.

Here are six (seventeen, really, but some are grouped) simple applications that will help - and they're all free for personal use!

1. PC Decrapifier - A lot of people that drop their systems off for repair say "take out any programs that don't need to be there." Well, that's exactly the kind of crud Decrapifier is designed to get rid of. It compares the programs on your system to a list of known bloatware (Wikipedia definition) and simplifies the removal process.

2. Malware Bytes - Those annoying popups you're getting? The weird pages you see when you try to search for something in your browser? Malware Bytes does a great job at removing the pests that cause those problems. It's usually the first program I run on horribly bogged-down computers. After a scan, clean, and reboot, they're usually much more cooperative.

3. Glary Utilities - The one-click maintenance mode in Glary is a wonderfully simple way for even non-technical users to keep their systems tuned. It tackles all kinds of tasks, from removing temporary file garbage and broken shortcuts to tuning up your registry.

One note: download the slim version to avoid the Ask Toolbar. You can opt out of it during the regular install, but slim removes it altogether.

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Filed under: Utilities, Windows, Freeware, Open Source, Windows x64

6 great free cleanup utilities for Windows


Update: Looking for more apps to help tune up, clean, and repair your computer? Check out this list of six programs that help you solve your problems for free!

Nobody likes useless junk taking up valuable hard drive space. Fortunately, there's a whole slew of good, free programs out there to help us keep things ship-shape. And yes, most of them are called [letter] + Cleaner. Here are five worth checking out.

If you use one of these apps, share your thoughts in the comments! As always, if I missed your favorite please share it with us!

Bleachbit (open source, installer) pictured - While it only handles file cleanup and is a comparatively large download (it's Linux and Windows compatible and runs about 8Mb with GTK), Bleachbit supports a much larger list of programs than most of the other cleaning apps. Apart from all major browsers, it also tidies up after Google Earth, Flash, Java, Second Life Viewer, Skype, Vuze, and more. Found 63.7Mb of crap files on my recently-cleaned drive.

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Filed under: Utilities, Windows, Freeware

FlexTK Makes File Management Easy


If you're like us, your hard drive is anything but tidy. That's because us power users can't be bothered to keep things organized - there are just too many awesome things out there to download, extract, and forget about because half of them turn out to be garbage.

FlexTK for Windows helps make short work of cleaning up after yourself, offering a full complement of file management tools in one handy package. Folder sync, duplicate file search, temp file cleanup, storage utilization, search, and an advanced organization module are all included. Navigation is handled beautifully in an explorer-like manner, tweaked by the addition of breadcrumbs and a "bookmarks" pane that allows you to quickly link your favorite locations.

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Featured Time Waster

The World's Hardest Game 2.0 - Time Waster

So, just how good at time waster games are you? Think you've got the stuff? Well, The World's Hardest Game 2.0 doesn't think you do. Yes, amazingly, it's possible to have a sequel to a game called "The World's Hardest Game". It doesn't seem logically possible, since if the first one was actually the world's hardest, how could another one come along and share the moniker? It made me doubt the name in the first place. That is, until I tried the game. The mechanics of the game are very simple. You are a small red square, ...

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