14 DAY TRIAL // There was a time when the tools to keep your computer running at a high pace were a mere handful. Time and technology changed this and now a large number of suites dedicated to maintaining your computer smoothly running have emerged offering a plethora of tools to clean the system.
FCleaner is presented as “a freeware all-in one Windows cleaning and optimization tool” designed to eliminate useless files, tweak the system, and generally sweep out all obstacles slowing down your Windows. It basically cleans up certain areas of the system that tend to keep files longer than needed, web browser tracks and even plugins pertaining to other applications.
To make the cleaning options complete FCleaner also features an Uninstaller and a Startup Manager. Additional instruments include shortcuts to Windows built-in applets such as Security Center, System Restore, System Information, Command Line and Scheduled Task.
A very simple user-friendly interface contains all the tools and instruments within easy reach and comfortably arranged. The Cleaner section, the first one in the menu list, provides the system cleaning choices under the form of checkboxes so all you have to do is tick the desired ones and start the cleansing process.
The three main areas present in the section allow you to rid the system of otiose items stored by the operating system (Windows), web browsers and application plugins. The Windows section is split in three: Advanced, System and Windows Explorer. Each of them has a list of checkboxes to be ticked according to your needs and preferences.
Advanced sub-menu allows you to clean the menu order cache, old prefetched data (although I would keep them), IIS log, thumbnail cache and even Windows Error Reporting logs. Unprofitable system files that can be subjected to FCleaner include the data thrown to Recycle Bin, Windows Clipboard, memory dumps (DMP files created by Windows at system crash), CHDSK file fragments (usually contain junk data and can be erased to help keep drives clean). The application can also remove those temporary files that can end up taking up a huge chunk of space disk and the Windows log files.
Windows Explorer sub-menu deals with eliminating recent documents, Run menu items, search assistant auto-complete files and other Explorer most recently used data. Everything is a tick away from removal from your system.
Like most other system cleaning software FCleaner comes with the option of analyzing the computer before proceeding to eliminating all the data. The duration of the analysis depends on the amount of clog data present in the system. Also, the analysis will cover only the areas selected in the right hand part of the application window. The report is not comprehensive enough to list the files sentenced to oblivion but will give you the total amount of space that will be gained after the cleaning session.
Moving onward to the browser cleaning area, you will notice that all major browsers are supported. Besides the ubiquitous Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox, the list also includes Opera, Google Chrome and Apple's Safari web browsers. For all of them FCleaner will try to clear the cache, cookies and history. Unfortunately there are some issues with the process.
During our testing the application failed to clear the history files of Firefox 3.0.4. The same result was recorded when trying to clear the typed URLs in Opera 9.63. In the case of Google Chrome the cleaning process went well, but FCleaner kept showing that there was data to be deleted even if the browser was simply started and then closed. This would actually happen with all tested browsers and it is normal because the respective apps create the necessary containers for future data the moment they are launched. As for Safari, the application has not been tested with this web browser.
The Uninstall helper included in FCleaner is nothing sophisticated and it practically works just like the Add/Remove applet in Windows XP or the Programs and Features one under Vista. The uninstall process simply relies on the uninstall file of every software you install on the system. So the process is as thorough as the developer of the respective application wants it to be.
The Startup Manager is also pretty basic, offering only remove or disable functions for each listed item. However, the advantage is that you get a clear view of the elements that start with the operating system. You will also see the status of the entry as well as the registry group it is included in.
The Tools menu in FCleaner makes available tools that can also be accessed from Windows but here the most important of them are all gathered together. You can launch the Security Center in Windows, access System Restore, System Information, Command Line and Scheduled Task applets. The one I most appreciate is System Restore because in case of a little disaster it allows you to revert the operating system to a previous configuration.
The list of options included in FCleaner is not large and comprises choices such as starting the app with the operating system (this is a default option), enable an automatic cleanup session at program launch (the report will not be displayed and the software will close automatically after the job is done).
Cookie management is available in this section permitting you to choose the cookies to be excluded from the cleanup process. Unfortunately, the option is available only for Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox and all the other web browsers are left out.
An extremely useful option for more advanced users is the possibility to create a custom file cleaning filter. Thus the capabilities of FCleaner can be extended to specific folders and target particular file types, not only the default ones. The features can be tweaked to include sub-folders and delete empty folders. Nothing went wrong in our testing with this feature and all file types we instructed the application to delete were eliminated with no fuss although the elements were not displayed when we ran the analysis.
FCleaner proves to be a light tool for cleaning your computer of unused files that just sit in their folder contributing to the general system clutter. There are issues to be fixed and hopefully the developer will not stop with this version. Overall, it moves pretty fast and does a good job but there are slip-ups especially with cleaning up the web browser files.
The Good
FCleaner provides quick access to some essential Windows applets such as Command Line and System Restore.
After the analysis you are reported how much data shall be eliminated once the cleaning process completes. The report is broken down in categories and the total amount of data is also calculated.
The Bad
FCleaner failed to efficiently clean the history files in Firefox 3.0.4 and the typed URLs in Opera 9.63. Built-in uninstaller is nothing special as all it does is access each applications uninstall file so there is no search for leftover data in the registry or on the hard disk.
The Truth
Yet the application comes with its share of trip-ups and there is still some work to be done almost in all areas. But the software is on the right track.
Here are some snapshots of the application in action:
