RegCure Registry Cleaner
RegCure is a registry cleaner with a couple of other tools bundled in with it, and is one of the better-rated programs out there. It will backup your registry, clean out the junk, and also let you control what gets run when your computer boots up. Using this can often shave quite a bit of time off how long it takes to boot the computer back up, because the more stuff you have in there, the longer it will take to get things going.
The basic scan will go through a number of different things that could be clogging up your computer - the list below shows all the different things it scans through:
When you complete the scan, you'll get a list of everything you've found. When I ran it on my computer, I found a ton of junk that had built up over time:
The other thing I really like about this is that there is an option for you to easily manage what programs are going to be run when Windows starts up. Many times when I've had a virus or a malicious program installed, I haven't been able to get rid of them because they use a nasty trick: even if I delete them, they have something hidden that will reinstall the virus again the minute I restart my computer. Managing the startup list lets you prevent this from happening. As you can see below, you can just select certain things you want to turn off. Most of this looks like gibberish to anyone who isn't experienced with computers, but one thing you can do is search for each Program that you see listed. Often, you'll find out that something is malicious if you search for it in Google.
Overall, this is a very good cleaner - simple, easy to use, and will fix most of the problems you'd encounter.
Useful Links:
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