Surprising speedup after running CCleaner

[roger_m]

I've been having problems with a used Samsung 12.1" notebook I bought. It not very powerful, but was running slower than it should be - definately noticably slower than my netbooks.

I initially thought it was due to overheating. However after blowing out the air vents with compressed air, the laptop was running cooler but not faster. I had tried all I could - short of doing a clean install of Windows 7 to increase the speed, but with little effect. Even running the pro version of Advanced SystemCare did little to help. Since I have been thiking about selling the laptop (cheaply due to speed issues) I decided to install CCleaner and do a clean with the default settings (usually the first thing I do after installing CCleaner is to deslect all options to clean mru/history data so that junk file are the only things cleaned, I don't even clean cookies). Now my laptop is running a lot better.

While I had run disk cleanups with several programs, I had always selected to not clean any MRU/history data. This is something I never ever clean as don't want it removed. For example I want my web browsers to know remember my browsing history so that I can go to previously visited sites more quickly, i.e. I start typing in a url and autocomplete will finish it for me. Also another example I like that when I go Start/Run it remebers previous commands entered.

I was really surprised that cleaning the mru/history data made such a difference in speed - I did not think it would affect performance. Now my laptop is running as it should.

[TheMozart]

I for one am celebrating your success

But does anyone know exactly what CCleaner cleaned up that would make such a difference to speed?

At a guess, I'd say it's because it takes time and CPU power to search through MRU databases - more if the databases have gotten really big. 6 months or so of browsing could add up to a lot of entries, depending on the use pattern. Funny, though, I never really thought about that as a possible cause of Windows slowdowns (or slowdowns on any OS).

BTW, some applications let you discard MRUs after a certain amount of time - I believe Firefox has an option for that. Might come in handy in the future.

[ltsnow]

You also might want to try MRU-Blaster since CCleaner worked so well. I have been using both of them for years. MRU-Blaster is an oldie but goodie from the same guy who makes SypwareBlaster.

http://www.javacoolsoftware.com/mrublaster.html