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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, Windows x64

Portable Little Registry Cleaner tidies up Windows registry clutter


Like the dark corners of your C: drive, your Windows registry can accumulate quite a bit of clutter. Little Registry Cleaner is on the job, ready to locate registry refuse and dispose of it.

The application weighs in at just over 1mb and is fully portable - just extract the exe file's contents to a folder using an application like 7zip. Start it up, click the scan button, and LRC will locate registry entries that can be removed without harming your system.

Since CCleaner is my current cleanup app of choice, I ran it side-by-side. While CCleaner's scan was faster, LRC located 32 more items. After fixing problems, LRC automatically re-scanned and found 6 remaining issues (all missing icons) it couldn't fix. CCleaner didn't have any luck removing them either.

Little Registry Cleaner also includes a startup manager and contains a good set of options for less experienced users. By default, it automatically creates system restore points, checks for updates, and has a built-in registry restore funciton. I would like to see an option to disable the scanning results pop-up window - the important information is already presented in the main window.

It's a free download and runs on both 32 and 64-bit Windows, and is a nice registry cleanup option for more inexperienced users.

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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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