14 DAY TRIAL // I am a person oscillating between lazy and almost workaholic, but I always try to avoid extremes. The bad part is that when it comes to cleaning my house, I am as lazy as possible, because I can always find something better to be done than this. Anyway, if it's about cleaning my operating system's registry or the junk files from my hard drive...then we're on the right path!
The system cleaner we're having here today is called HDCleaner and its latest version is 2.362. The good parts that I can see without even installing it are the following facts: this program is completely free to use, the setup package is smaller than 1MB and these two sound so good that I hardly wait to discover it all. The installation passed away like a gust of wind, leaving me in front of a simple and easy to use interface, with six menus that we're going to discover right away.
First of all, I must say that I noticed two small transparency problems with the interface's upper corners, nothing really bad, but this should only happen to beginners, and this program doesn't look like a starter in this field. Other than that, everything looks good, maybe a little outdated, but what I am looking here are the features; after all, this is a completely free system tool, and when we're talking about such programs, I always care less about their interfaces.
First menu is called Clean Hard Drive and its purpose is to help you erase junk files, but that's not done without control. If you need, you can configure exceptions and choose the file extensions to clean.
The Clean Folders area looks more interesting, since I see Wipe Free Space and Shred Files here. Yummy! The shredder allows you to choose a custom number of overwrites to be done for the destruction of unwanted files, and the last two tools present here let you check duplicate files and the status of the shared DLLs, a very useful feature that you don't see too often.
If you think it can't get better than that, then you're wrong - next area is called Clean Center and its features are the virtual version of a full house cleaning kit - Internet Explorer Cookies, Registry Cleaner, Super Cleaner (deletes files and MRUs in one operation, using DoD wipe method), AutoRuns (a startup manager), an average Uninstaller, Installed Software info tool, a File Splitter and an Anti Spy that allows you to disable Windows functions that can send your private information over the Internet.
What we have next is the Drive Information menu, and its four tools are Drive Information, TreeSize Information, DirToHTML and Check Disk. The first two allow you to locate easily space consuming folders and manage your hard drive space better, the third can create HTML file indexes from one of your directories, while the last tool is exactly what its name says - a tool for checking your disk and fixing the errors it may find.
The Backup menu can be used to restore the items you have previously deleted, while the Options area allows you to schedule cleaning operations, apart from the other settings you may expect to find here. These being said, let's move on and draw the conclusions, shall we?
The Good
HDCleaner is an extremely useful program that's very easy to use, fast, has a lot of features and is reliable enough for all of us, but some operations may require caution. Above everything, it's completely free to use!
The Bad
After updating this version, I got a beta that required registration and wouldn't start, and this makes me think this program is going to become a commercial one...I can only hope I am wrong and it stays free!
The Truth
HDCleaner is one of those programs that gives you all and doesn't require anything in exchange, so I don't want to think about this program as becoming a paid one. If you don't want to be surprised by this happening, take your time to get this program now, you won't regret it!
Here are some snapshots of the application in action:
