Virus check add-on - 'Speed up your computer' - Good or?

[scorecard]

Installed Avira free a week ago  - now getting pop ups for an add-on 'Speed up your computer" US$22-.

 

- Do these 'speed up' add-ons really achieve much?

 

- Is there downside?

 

Any aligned comments appreciated, Thanks. 

 

 

Edited June 17, 2018 by scorecard

[lopburi3]

In general they are snake oil products and often much worse.  Did you agree to advertising with that 'free' Avira install?  If not I would be contacting them first as to how/why you are getting these pop ups.

 

Personally I would not use a product that advertised such nonsense.

[stereolab]

11 minutes ago, lopburi3 said:

In general they are snake oil products and often much worse.  Did you agree to advertising with that 'free' Avira install?  If not I would be contacting them first as to how/why you are getting these pop ups.

 

Personally I would not use a product that advertised such nonsense.

As stated. do not do this under any circumstances, you will be opening  a Pandoras' box, to other problems. Is your computer actually slow?

[Get Real]

Do not buy and install that product. It´s only downsides with it. As a matter a fact so many that it´s not even worth dragging up.
As another thing, there is absolutely no benefits at all with it either, which makes you draw a right down to the core negative total.

Edited June 17, 2018 by Get Real

[transam]

The best thing I have used for over a year now is 10Bit Advanced System Care Ultimate Pro..

 

Has a really good toolbox too...I use that with a few other of their freeware programs...

[gjoo888]

Optimizing and "speed-up" programs will clean and remove junk from your computer, some will safely clean the registry as well. But, there's programs like Ccleaner (free version) that do a pretty good job for free. I have a 9-year old Thinkpad that works as good as new, and I've used Ccleaner since I bought it. I also defrag and free up disk space often in the Control Panel of Windows.

[lopburi3]

1 hour ago, gjoo888 said:

Optimizing and "speed-up" programs will clean and remove junk from your computer

They are more likely to take control and require payment than fix anything.  They are not needed using today's operating systems and a serious danger to most people even when not malware.

[Aforek]

For registry, I don't believe any program, like Microsoft says, never clean your registry and my computer works fine; in the past, CCleaner "cleaned " my registry much too much and I had to make a clean install: registry, not any more !

[ostyan]

Defragging is useless practically. Somehow most of the registry cleaners are the same. I had CCleaner, but they had some kinda scandal and since than  I have tried dozens of clones and optimizers. I could find one working program out of dozens of snake oil. Since I do not want to advertise it the first letter is "W" and it has a number in its name 365.

About Microsoft, I am rather sceptical. Whatever problem I had to solve, I consulted with Microsoft pages and found no real solution to my problem. There are a number of good tuning sites, youtube where you can understand the problem and they show you the possibilities of fixing it.

Otherwise, I think Linux is better and no need to use any "optimizers".

[upu2]

Dont do it. It is a waste of money and in many cases causes more problems that it cures. If you want your computer to go faster disable the applications from running at start up, remove all the temp files and defrag / optimize your drive

[Kerryd]

"Free" programs/apps often include pop-up ads, it's how they get paid. Many offer to remove those ads, if you pay for a subscription. That's life on the internet these days.

 

I will use something like Trend Microsystem's free "HouseCall" to do a sweep of my computers every now and then if I suspect there is a problem. (I'm also running a paid Norton Internet Security subscription on them as well so I'm pretty well covered - hopefully).

 

Other "free programs" though I tend to use once, get the end result I was looking for, then uninstall the program. Also, many of those "free" programs will try to add things like 3rd party tool bars if you click the default Install icon (some have the option to do a "Custom Install" where you can deselect the 3rd party apps - but some may not).

Some will disable ad blockers as well (especially those that rely mainly on ads to generate revenue).

 

As for the "speed up" programs - most of them do what you can do yourself already, like defrag your hard drive. Those speed up apps basically remove obsolete Registry entries, empty temporary internet file caches and trash cans and defrag your hard drive.

Some of those things (like Registry entries) you do NOT want to play with unless you are VERY sure you know what you are doing. However, I don't think cleaning up the Registry will improve speed that much by itself.
(I tried a few "free" speed up programs in the past and they were not worth the effort as they didn't really do much and you had to contend with the other crap they try to add to your system.)
 

Deleting temporary internet files and defragging the hard drive are the two things that help the most (I have mine set to automatically defrag every week). If you do a lot of downloading, copying, moving and deleting of files, after awhile your hard drive has to work a lot harder to try and find the information you need, as it may end up being written in dozens of different locations on the hard drive. Defragging basically reorganizes all the files/programs so they are back together again. That way when you call up a file/start a program, all the associated files are in the same location. (Basically. It's a bit more complicated than that.)
You can set that up through windows in a couple minutes and never (really) have to worry about it again.

[NoshowJones]

On 6/17/2018 at 9:43 AM, transam said:

The best thing I have used for over a year now is 10Bit Advanced System Care Ultimate Pro..

 

Has a really good toolbox too...I use that with a few other of their freeware programs...

You advised me to use the 10Bit Advanced System care a long time ago along with a few others and my computers have run great ever since.

Ultimate Pro? I assume you pay for that one.

Edited June 18, 2018 by possum1931

[transam]

3 minutes ago, possum1931 said:

You advised me to use the 10Bit Advanced System care a long time ago along with a few others and my computers have run great ever since.

Ultimate Pro? I assume you pay for that one.

Yep, it has a lot more "tools"...I use it every morning, it does about 20 jobs...

[scorecard]

11 minutes ago, transam said:

Yep, it has a lot more "tools"...I use it every morning, it does about 20 jobs...

For those you are not all that tech savvy (me), is it also a virus remover, malware remover, etc?

[transam]

Just now, scorecard said:

For those you are not all that tech savvy (me), is it also a virus remover, malware remover, etc?

It scans for virus at all times entering the PC, but I use their free malware scan as l am not sure if ASC does that..It never finds anything...

At times I use online scans just to check, never finds anything..So all good...

[petermik]

10 hours ago, Aforek said:

For registry, I don't believe any program, like Microsoft says, never clean your registry and my computer works fine; in the past, CCleaner "cleaned " my registry much too much and I had to make a clean install: registry, not any more !

I,ve used CCleaner on all my pc,s for the past ten years or so and never encountered any problems......"cleaned my registry too much" ..........not possible sorry

[transam]

Just now, petermik said:

I,ve used CCleaner on all my pc,s for the past ten years or so and never encountered any problems......"cleaned my registry too much" ..........not possible sorry

I also use Ccleaner every night before I turn off the PC...

[scorecard]

13 minutes ago, transam said:

It scans for virus at all times entering the PC, but I use their free malware scan as l am not sure if ASC does that..It never finds anything...

At times I use online scans just to check, never finds anything..So all good...

ASC  ?

online scans - do you mean like Adaware etc?

[transam]

2 minutes ago, scorecard said:

ASC  ?

online scans - do you mean like Adaware etc?

I have 10Bit Advanced System Care Ultimate Pro (ASC) which you pay for. I install Malewarebytes Pro free trial to double check stuff then delete it, using 10Bit uninstaller..MB  is good and finds PUP's, if nothing else on my PC..ASC uses PUP's so I have to uncheck those before l let it clean..

[petermik]

7 hours ago, transam said:

I have 10Bit Advanced System Care Ultimate Pro (ASC) which you pay for. I install Malewarebytes Pro free trial to double check stuff then delete it, using 10Bit uninstaller..MB  is good and finds PUP's, if nothing else on my PC..ASC uses PUP's so I have to uncheck those before l let it clean..

Forget the malwarebytes and use ADWCleaner....part of the same organisation....its also free and much better

[transam]

1 minute ago, petermik said:

Forget the malwarebytes and use ADWCleaner....part of the same organisation....its also free and much better

MB uses ADW...

[Aforek]

44 minutes ago, petermik said:

I,ve used CCleaner on all my pc,s for the past ten years or so and never encountered any problems......"cleaned my registry too much" ..........not possible sorry

it's your opinion, not mine  https://www.pcgamer.com/windows-registry-error-clean/

[transam]

56 minutes ago, Aforek said:

it's your opinion, not mine  https://www.pcgamer.com/windows-registry-error-clean/

I read a lot too, but I still use Ccleaner with noooooooo ploblems every day....

[Slain]

Tried the free version of Avast. Cancelled within a month because pesky ads and other offers .  They still took the monthly fee and told me I was signed up for a year.  

Luckily I had signed up using Paypal and they sorted it out for me.

[VBF]

Used CCleaner since the Windows 98 days, through XP, W7 and now W10.

 

They dropped the ball once in September 2017 with version 5.33.6162 which contained malware  https://www.ccleaner.com/news/blog/2017/9/18/security-notification-for-ccleaner-v5336162-and-ccleaner-cloud-v1073191-for-32-bit-windows-users  but they sorted it out PDQ and importantly did not try to hide their embarrassing mistake!

 

Be aware - CCleaner is not an antivirus tool in any way!

 

My preferred setup on Windows is as follows:

 

Paid-for Norton Security which includes AV, F/Wall, / A/Spam, Exploit prevention. This runs in the background, and as it's paid-for - no adverts.

Then Free Malwarebytes - run on demand

Then Free CCleaner -  set the way i want it as regards cookies, privacy, monitoring, scheduling - run on demand, usually daily before shutdown and manual backup.

 

 

 

Edited June 18, 2018 by VBF

[peter525]

Avast antivirus  free

CCleaner  free.

Malware bites,  free.   (All free via filehippo.com ).

[maxcorrigan]

22 hours ago, peter525 said:

Avast antivirus  free

CCleaner  free.

Malware bites,  free.   (All free via filehippo.com ).

Avast may be OK but a pain if you want to uninstall it, have to download a special tool from avast otherwise it shows up everywhere, you can't just normally uninstall it!

[transam]

1 minute ago, maxcorrigan said:

Avast may be OK but a pain if you want to uninstall it, have to download a special tool from avast otherwise it shows up everywhere, you can't just normally uninstall it!

10Bit uninstaller is very good...

[maxcorrigan]

1 minute ago, transam said:

10Bit uninstaller is very good...

That's true, but with Avast the problem is maybe it's a good anti-virus, as i read once, an anti-virus works like a virus itself delving into all nooks and crannies like a virus, which possibly make it difficult to get rid of, i'm no expert so can't vouch for this explanation, but it seemed to make some kind of sense! 

[transam]

1 minute ago, maxcorrigan said:

That's true, but with Avast the problem is maybe it's a good anti-virus, as i read once, an anti-virus works like a virus itself delving into all nooks and crannies like a virus, which possibly make it difficult to get rid of, i'm no expert so can't vouch for this explanation, but it seemed to make some kind of sense! 

Over the years I have tried them all, well the big names...There was to much crap with many of them...I have found my happy medium where the stuff on my PC does not interact with others...No ploblems..Only one program is paid for...And no ads too...