Guide of Tools and Tricks to clean your computer from crap.

Story:
Over the past few years of working with computers I've gatherd quite a bit of tricks and programs to help people clean there computers. So after looking at the many posts here i thought of this post.

There is not really any order in this post. But Il do a few things..

Anti Virus. You should have one. Not two. Just one. (at least one thats active, if you have others.. make sure they are not running at the same time) Anything norton is BAD. It will slow down your computer. Plus it costs money. you don't want to spend money on something you can get for free thats better. After you uninstall it, make sure you run this http://www.majorgeeks.com/download.php?det=4749 It will remove the crap it leaves behind.
Lets look at AVG . Its what i use, Very good, http://free.grisoft.com/
If you don't have a anti virus, get AVG. if you got other anti virus's and think they are not working that well, try AVG.

Firewalls ? Well tbh i got my router . And thats good enough for me. I don't think theres any good software firewalls. All they do is make a "proxy" on your computer and route all the net traffic though there, Kinda like a tunnel with four lanes. Once you start doing a lot of things. The net goes Very slow.
So firewalls, if you got a good anti virus, you shouldnt need one.

Anti Spam crap junk whatever program.

Now theres a few programs that you can use to remove crap. I use SpyBot Search and Destory a lot.
http://www.safer-networking.org/en/home/
Make sure you get it from that link, theres alot of other sites that "spoof" their site, but the download has junk/virus's in them.

With Spybot s&d You open it up, check for updates, update if theres any. immunize, and then scan. Petty simple. It will look for a tracking cookies and a few ad crap programs. Also will ask if it can run on reboot if it cant clean something.

Theres also Ad-Aware 2007 http://www.lavasoftusa.com/products/ad_aware_free.php It searchs the whole computer for ad crap. Unlike spybot S&D. Using both of them is the best idea.

Ok, so you got a anti virus and anti spam crap programs. Good, Now lets look at temp files. You run a .exe , it makes a file in the temp folder. You run some programs, it makes things in the temp. You watch videos on youtube .. it stores the videos in some cache or temp.

Now Iv found CCleaner to be very good are removing temp files, cache folders, history and a few other things. Its free, simple, and fast. And on most computers when i run it for the first time. iv been able to remove 500 MB's to 5 gigs of temp files. WOW.
http://www.ccleaner.com/download/builds.aspx Download CCleaner v# - Slim or Basic
Install and go to the cleaner tab. Check what you want, analyze and it will tell you how much its going to clean Something like " 4.99MB to be removed. (Approximate size)" . Then hit run cleaner.

Now go to the issues tab. Scan , fix , fix all.
Now rebooting is a good idea at this time.

Now a few extra tools that are always nice (who doesn't like extra tools)
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysint ... fault.mspx

Now the one i like you to look at is http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysint ... oruns.mspx
It lets you look at things that run. Disable what you don't need, it will make windows boot ALOT faster.

Another link : http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/down ... rtoys.mspx
few great things in this link.
The Alt-Tab Replacement is really cool. As i normaly got alot of programs open. it makes it kinda cool to see whats running.
Power Calculator is nice if you are in those high math classes. for me, i never use it as i don't know anything past simple math (its a lie but i don't do advanced math unless i need to )
And the main thing i want to show you in this link is Tweak UI. With Tweak UI You can setup auto login to windows. You can do a few other things with this program. Petty cool too.

Few other things to do, Update Windows. Thats a major. If it doesnt work for you all that good..
http://www.autopatcher.com/downloads/
Large download but has a massive amount of updates.

Don't use limewire or other P2P programs. They are filled with junk and just when you think you found what you want. its screwed at the very end. Use Torrents. Theres many sites that you can get whatever you need. (not going to list due to legal crap)

Outside links:
http://www.ocforums.com/showthread.php?t=420646 Help you with BlueScreens.
http://ccollomb.free.fr/unlocker/ Is a nice program to "unlock" things were you cant remove/delete/move the file.

I was thinking of doing something like this. This is going to be of alot of use to alot of people.

http://techsomething.net/theantispywareguide.html

Ive written an article that has a good list of troubleshooting steps, check it out.

Avast! Home is also a nice free antivirus. It's even caught some stuff where I never would have expected it to, like HTML exploits in Firefox.

To be honest, I have never used a dedicated anti-virus program. I do the occasional free online scan with Panda and TrendMicro, but very rarely do they turn up anything. The occasional spyware infection, but nothing more than that usually.
I really don't recommend any anti-viruses as most of the ones I've seen are resource hogs. What I do recommend is that people become savvy on using computers so that they don't make the mistake of installing a virus onto their system. I also recommend safer browsers like Firefox and/or Opera, which have yet to have been exploited. People overhype viruses, saying they're a huge problem when they're really not. I haven't had a virus in probably 5-7 years, and the reasons why I got viruses before that time was because I wasn't using the Internet responsibly and going to shady sites to get programs. If you understand that there are people out there to get you and that you should make sure that you aren't downloading files from a dangerous source, then you'll be fine.
If you're REALLY PARANOID about this kind of stuff, I highly recommend security plugins for Firefox (if you use it). The WOT plugin determines how safe a site is by looking at accumulated user ratings of a site and you can even contribute if you find something dangerous on a website with only 4 clicks. It's a nuisance at times, but it will give you peace of mind.

...is this really necessary? I've never (on my new computer) had an antivirus since I formatted the hell out of Norton (the day I got it) and haven't even checked since then. O_o

Should I?

not if you know what all youve downloaded. which for you, is a lot.

i disabled half of my secrurity system. i use McAfee and i have it sweep my hard drive of any "shady" files every saturday morning at 3:00 AM.

security isnt really necessary if you know what you are downloading.

Since you're a moron and a fan of torrenting everything under the sun, yes.

I don't have Antivirus either. I would not recommend it for others, however, for me, it works. I treat the internet like I treat the downtown areas of most metropolitan cities. if someone is offering something fancy, or flashy, for free; it probably isn't, and should be avoided like the plague

All you need is to know what you're doing. Anyway, just download AVG and make it run at, say, every weekday at 10:00 AM, while you're at school.

For torrent utilities (Which are 100% legal to use and have on your computer) I recommend utorrent http://www.utorrent.com/

You forgot one needed item to be safe: Common Sense.

If you want to buy a good anti virus or spyware then buy NOD32

Avast Home edition is free and uses practically no resources its saved me from 1 worm so far.

AVG is the best broseph.