Good Free System Maintenence Software?

i'm looking for a good and free system maintenence software. something that will repair corrupted files and/or keep my hard disc(s) running smoothly and error free-(to the best of it's capabilities)

 

CCleaner maybe?

 

Advanced System Care , Glary Utilities

 

How about something from this awesome thread?

The Ever-Growing Free Windows Software List
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=337890

Cin

 

Corrupted files? Find and fix the cause, restore files from your backups.

Drives not "running smoothly and error free"? Download and run the manufacturer's diagnostic software, replace drives if it finds anything serious.

 

CCleaner, Windows Defragmenter, & Windows check disk utility.

 

Ccleaner, GlaryUtilities, Revo Uninstaller, JKDefrag Gui

 

and which ones do you guys vote as best and why?

 

Ccleaner-Does everything and well
Revo Uninstaller-Best uninstaller ever, after a uninstall it can search pc for leftover files
JKDefrag Gui- Good defeagger
Glary Utilities-does a lot like CC Cleaner but has different tools that are helpful.

 

Is Glary Utilities good? I'm gonna try it out and see. Never heard of it before since now.

 

Glary is good. I use it for the registry clner, context menu, and empty folder finder

 

what makes a defragger better than another? so the defragger in my windows administrative tools works only so well or what?

so would you vote for Ccleaner or advanced system care?

 

JKDefrag GUI is faster than windows defragger. And yes, Ccleaner is a must have tool for every pc, imo.

JKDefrag GUI also has many other features. Registry compacter and can clean temp files and prefetch folder, etc.

 

I'd take CC Cleaner over Advanced System Care. Used both, like CC Cleaner better.

 

ok so i loaded Ccleaner and it listed a whole bunch of stuff. roughly 304 MB of files. some included cookies, system files, and others but only a few said "marked for deletion". i wasn't sure what exactly it was about to remove so i didn't go through with the clean up process. shortly thereafter, i got a blue screen saying something recently installed on my hard disk was either corrupted or something like that. i had to turn off my computer and try to reboot. it went into checkdsk and deleted some orphan files and some other things but after that it would stay at the windows XP loading screen forever and never load my desktop. long story short i had to reinstall windows. long story short this is a laptop that i bought without a HD, so i bought one, installed windows form scratch, and have been installing drivers and programs such as avg, itunes, photoshop, etc.

anyone have any idea whatsoever about what possibly could've happened?

 

It could be the HD is going bad. Was SMART enabled for it? In Vista, I think it would tell you that your hard-drive is showing signs of failure by checking the SMART values reported by the hard-drive. In XP, I'm not sure it does this.

 

well i can boot up just fine now that i reinstalled windows. the computer works just fine other than the error i got yesterday that forced me to reinstall windows. and if it is my HD, how can i diagnose if it is a fixable problem or not??

 

In that light, might seem that some files got inadvertantly hosed when you ran CCleaner. If your system is running fine now with the re-install, then it's highly likely that the HD is just fine.

I think there is a utility somewhere that can read the SMART values from the HD to determine if their is any problem with it, and possibly fix it. The only other thing you could do is run the chkdsk command line tool with the /f switch, reboot, and let it scan the disk in it's entirety just to be safe.

 

well if that is the case, i don't want anything to do with Ccleaner. i just analyzed my system. i didn;t even prompt it to remove anything. is there and system clean up software that i don;t have to worry about it removing critical system functionality files?

run the chkdsk command line tool with the /f switch,

and also how exactly do i do that? i'm computer savvy but i'm still learning

 

To run the check-disk utility:

1. Click Start, then Run...
2. Type "cmd" without the quotes and click the OK button
3. In the command prompt that comes up, type (again without quotes): "chkdsk c: /f"
4. It will ask to schedule the check at boot time. Type "y" and press enter.
5. Reboot, and the check-disk utility will be the first thing Windows runs when it starts.

Hope that helps.

 

so if i do that, is it going to run check disk every time i boot up from then on?? i'd prefer it to only do it when i need it to.

 

also back to the HD DFT issue-

"You may create the media under Windows (using the Windows OS version) or Linux (using the binary image), but you must start your system with the DOS-bootable diskette to run DFT."

it's talking about starting your system DOS-bootable diskette to run DFT for linux users right? i should be able to just boot up and instert the disc with windows correct?

 

It will only run the check once. Afterwards, Windows won't check the disk unless you schedule it again with that command.

 

Where do i find JKDefrag Gui, i googled it but didn't get a site for it.

 

JKDefrag can be found here. What the poster is referring to is the "JkDefrag.exe" file after you extract it - that one comes up with a GUI, the other one is command line.

 

o thanks a lot for the help.