14 DAY TRIAL // The more you use it, the more clogged up with junk files your system gets. If not taken care of, trash files will eat a good chunk of disk space. Claiming it back manually is a test of endurance for uninitiated users but with the appropriate program, you will be able to successfully carry out the job with minimum effort.
However, you have to be careful about the elected software for this cleaning job as it can come up with false positives that may corrupt your system or remove valid data from your computer. Solutions for the matter are a myriad but among the most trustworthy of them, there are CCleaner and EasyCleaner. Using them concomitantly can produce good results and positively affect your computer's performance.
Dedaulus is registered as a free utility tailored to clean the operating system of garbage. The developer states that it works on Windows 2000/XP/2003, but testing it on Vista generated no problems. The application is packed with tons of options, all meant to take care of the system by getting rid of temporary files and folders, clean Internet cache and history, give up empty folders, duplicate files or cleaning the registry.
A straightforward interface provides all the menus on the left hand side while on the right there are the correspondent settings. Menus are expandable buttons giving way to more options. 'Temporary files' lets you clean temporary folders in the system, search for temp files and wrong shortcuts. The application allows viewing all the files before proceeding to deleting them. It will calculate the total size of temporary files and display it.
Users may designate folders that accumulate junk files and add them to the process. Upon cleaning, the application will remove all the files contained by the defined folders in an instant.
Wrong Shortcuts menu comes with two options: either let Dedaulus System Cleaner take care of the job or add locations to be searched. I have to admit that the work in this sense is truly amazing as the application avoided all active links and successfully detected the wrong ones, regardless of their location.
Internet files are also dealt with in a professional manner. But the trouble is that there aren't too many options available. Dedaulus offers only cache and history cleaning and deleting the cookies. There is no cookie management and the supported drivers are IE, Opera and Firefox. For the operation to be successfully carried out, you will have to close all the browsers. Needless to say, the application does not warn you about this.
Empty folders menu brings two settings and one of them allows you to configure the program to search for empty folders and delete them recursively. Additional configuration lets you specify folders to be excluded from the search and select the location to be checked.
Finding duplicate files on your computer is yet another ability of the software. Unfortunately, the process takes a heck of a long time and during our testing, after half an hour, the scan was still not finished.
Dedaulus System Cleaner can deal with registry errors as well. The keys it searches in are Current_User and Local_Machine and according to the results returned during our testing, it did not include a single false positive. The menu shelter history cleaning option, which removes all recently opened files in Run dialog, Windows Recent Documents, last visited MRU, Search Assistant (Internet, files and folders, pictures, music and video, printers, computers and people), Open/Save dialog and a bunch of applications supported by Dedaulus System Cleaner. The list can be edited by the user as long as s/he knows what registry file to add.
The next menu of the application deals with uninstalling programs from your computer and safe deleting files. Do not expect the extraordinary in this menu because uninstallation is just a mere launching of "uninstall.exe" file of each software in Program Files. On XP, the list with all installed programs also contains system updates and hotfixes which can be easily removed from the computer.
There aren't too many clues on how safe the deleting files feature of the application is, but the results speak for themselves: the files are unrecoverable with classic deleted data retrieving softwares but the name of the file is visible. It seems that Dedaulus uses multiple file overwriting with random characters but it does not touch the name of the file.
The startup manager available in the program contains the basic options necessary for handling such items. You get to add more softwares in startup as well as remove them or set them to run once or always. However, do not try to see if there is a context menu available as this will minimize the application and close the menu. The application will display startup items from the current user account as well as from all accounts available on the computer.
Advanced tools menu permits disabling startup from a set of registry keys (Run and RunOnce from Local_Machine and Current_User) and detection of changes in the same keys.
Dedaulus System Cleaner configuration is simple as it allows adding it to startup (called "autoload" here), start minimized to system tray for less intrusion, create a shortcut on the desktop and in the main menu. It supports multiple profiles with different settings and creating and toggling between them is done from the Profile Manager in Preferences menu.
If you are looking for a quick way to clean your computer Dedaulus comes with a Onle Click CleanUp option. The settings for this option can be made in Preferences menu as well. A task list contains all the jobs available: cleaning temporary folders and Recycle Bin, temporary files, bad links, Internet cache, Internet history, cookies, registry errors and Windows and application history. All you need to do is check them and click Apply button.
The application has its good sides and bad sides. It does not install on your computer and removing it requires a simple deletion of the folder where it was extracted during the installation process. It seems that the program is not 100% complete as the first window during the installation does not render the characters correctly.
The Good
You can be sure that temporary files, bad links, Internet cache, history and cookies, empty folders and registry will be cleaned by Dedaulus System Cleaner.
The Bad
Adding temporary folders results in displaying a very weird message on both Vista and XP. The application could not complete a duplicate files scan in more than half an hour.
There is no cookie management and all cookies from IE, Firefox and Opera will be deleted. There is no warning to close web browsers when cleaning cache or history.
Beginners will have a tough time adding more applications for the software to clean history/recent files.
With each scan memory usage will increase. The downside is that it does not release that memory after the scan process is finished.
The Truth
The application is not 100% working, and there are lots of issues to be straightened up. It comes with a complete help and the multiple tips and brief descriptions in the interface will make it easy to handle. It will clean temporary files and registry cleaner did not return any false positives during our tests but there is no cookie management, folders cannot be added to be cleaned.
However, the application is worth giving a shot as it will not leave traces in the registry and uninstalling requires a simple deletion of the folder "Dedaulus SC EN" (by default, the path to extracting the application is in Documents and SettingsUserLocal SettingsTemp).
Here are some snapshots of the application in action:
