CCleaner

CCleaner, developed by Piriform, is a utility program used to clean potentially unwanted files and invalid Windows Registry entries from a computer.

ccleaner1CCleaner

Bad Dog IT recommends you run CCleaner at least once a week; or whenever your computer seems to be running slow.  Once a week at the minimum this will keep things running much smoother for you.

ccleaner_openOk double click the ccleaner icon on your desktop.

From here the basic opening screen will appear, you could simply choose Analyze and then Run Cleaner from this screen.

However; that will not give you the full benefits you are looking for.

Let's take a look at the options on the left hand side here.

Note: your options might differ from these if you have other browsers but we will get into that in the applications portion.

Windows Tab

ccleaner_optionsMicrosoft Edge & Internet Explorer

As you can see under the Windows tab we have Edge and Internet Explorer Browser options the example at the left shows the best options without removing yoru saved passwords.

Windows Explorer

In this section you want to choose everything with the exception of Network Passwords.

System

We want to choose everything in this section for the best results

Advanced

In this section some of the options are going to ask you if you are sure, click yes and check all of the options I have checked here.

Applications Tab

ccleaner_options2Depending on what programs you have installed there will be many of options here.

What we suggest is to check everything that does now say Saved Form Information, Saved Passwords.

If you check those it will erase all passwords and forms information you have for websites, like FaceBook your bank or anywhere else you have to log in.

Some of you may want to erase that everytime, it is up to you as far as that goes, we are just trying to give you the best safe options here.

Analyze Button

ccleaner_analyzeOk we are finally ready to do some actual cleaning now.

I want you to click the analyze button.

We now see what is actually slowing our computer down.

This shows what will be cleaned and how much space we will save by cleaning our computer.

Run Cleaner Button

ccleaner_cleanOk now we are ready to click the Run Cleaner button.

Click on the button and the system will start cleaning everything that you checked in the boxes.  If you have things open that it needs to clean it will ask you if you want ccleaner to close them for you.

After it finishes it will show you the results of how much space was saved and what was cleaned.