antivirus and system optimizer windows 10

You should even avoid the old free driver cleaner utilities, which haven’t been updated in years because they’re no longer useful. You don’t need to clean your drivers, so avoid the paid driver cleaners that promise they can fix all your PC problems. There was a time when driver cleaners were useful pieces of software, but they aren’t anymore. RELATED: Do You Need to Use a Driver Cleaner When Updating Drivers? If you want to free up memory, close some programs - don’t use a memory optimizer.

Let Windows take care of memory on its own. We’ve covered exactly why memory optimizers aren’t helpful in the past. Modern operating systems are designed to use up your memory - this speeds everything up. Using a memory optimizer will actually slow down your PC as it discards useful cache files from your RAM. RAM optimizers might have made some sense back in the days of Windows 95 when Windows had bad memory management and computers had tiny amounts of memory, but they’re now worse than useless.

Windows doesn’t need help “optimizing” or “boosting” your computer’s memory. RELATED: Why Memory Optimizers and RAM Boosters Are Worse Than Useless Skip the paid applications, which probably won’t work as well as the free alternatives. Sure, you can free up space and maybe even speed up your PC by deleting temporary files - but you can do that with the free CCleaner application or even the Disk Cleanup tool included with Windows. We’ve covered why PC-cleaning software programs are generally scams. Like registry cleaners, they’re advertised on banner ads all over the web - there are even daytime TV advertisements for expensive PC cleaning software. “PC cleaning” utilities are another worthless category of software. RELATED: PC Cleaning Apps are a Scam: Here's Why (and How to Speed Up Your PC) If you must use a registry cleaner, use the registry cleaner built into CCleaner and skip all the paid registry cleaners produced by shady companies. The registry is massive, and erasing even a few thousand tiny entries won’t speed your computer up. Running a registry cleaner once per week will likely cause more problems than it fixes. Registry cleaner companies often promise that registry cleaners will speed up your PC and fix any crash you encounter, but they won’t. Okay, there are some scenarios where a registry cleaner could theoretically fix a problem - but these are few and far between. RELATED: Why Using a Registry Cleaner Won't Speed Up Your PC or Fix Crashes

Antivirus and system optimizer windows 10