Hey fellow Windows users: good tune-up utilities?

[mreilly]

I've checked tech forums and found it challenging to get a decent idea of what other IT pros like me are using for efficient utilities to speed up/clean/optimize Windows systems (I always get told "Use Linux" or "Use a Mac", so I thought I'd check a non-IT forum. :)

I'm always looking for ways to make my users' (and mine) PCs really work better as Windows sometimes needs some tune-up work. I currently have the following utilities in my arsenal:

Registry Mechanic - fixes errors in the Windows registry
Clean-up! and CCleaner - delete temp files and other unnecessary clutter
Diskeeper Defragmenter - defragment hard drives (though I am still skeptical this actually produces measurable performance benefits; I run it more to save wear and tear on drive heads)

I also go through startup items (both in the registry and Startup folder) and remove anything that doesn't need to be there as well as disable unnecessary services, and use a Sysinternals product called PageDefrag to defragment the page file.

Anyone have any other tools (paid products or freebies) they use for improving the Windows experience?

[Kucinich4America]

1. Tune Up Utilities is pretty good (yes, that's really the name)

http://www.tune-up.com/products/tuneup-utilities/

More or less the equivalent of Norton Utilities, but not a resource hog like that program bundle is.

[China_cat]

2. A 12 gauge shotgun. Or a brick

Magnets work well, too.

(Just switched to Vista)

You might also want to run>msconfig and look at the startup there to see what you aren't using and can turn off. You might be surprised at what you find that wasn't in your startup menu.

[Omphaloskepsis]

3. I need dinner... But don't install shit people recommend.

Most of it is crap..

[Kutjara]

4. A lot of the utilities are holdovers from...

...Win 9x days, when the OS needed a lot of help to keep from falling over and dying. With the advent of Windows NT for the masses (2K, XP, and Vista), the OS does a much better job of looking after itself.

I haven't bothered much with registry cleaners or "optimizers" since moving to Win2k. I do, however, use Diskeeper and Window Washer, simply because the occasional defrag and clearout of caches and assorted crap makes things a bit peppier.

TweakXP and its successor, TweakVista let you streamline a lot of OS features to your liking, and allow you to set up things like RAM disks that can speed application performance by paging frequently used info to RAM instead of disk. You have to know what you're doing, however, or you could end up slowing down or destabilizing your system.

Other than that and good virus, firewall, and spyware software, I don't recommend using much of anything.

[DS1]

5. open regedit and dig out all the garbage in the 'run' section

by hand. if you don't immediately know what I'm talking about, have someone else do it.