Favorite: Windows utilities from Piriform

Some utilities you use once in a blue moon. Some utilities you end up using every day until they become indispensable.  One company that makes shareware that is part of my everyday toolkit is Piriform.

CCleaner cleans out cache files, cookies, temp files and registries. One excellent reason to use it is to eliminate the 10’s of thousands of cache and temporary files before doing antivirus scans or backups – this saves the scanning or backup software considerable time.

Speccy reports the specifications of your Windows computer, including the characteristics of your RAM modules, which is handy when you want to upgrade RAM to match the originals. It also reports the make and type of the motherboard, video card and hard drives, and the hard drive sizes and SMART status.

Recuva is for recovering lost data, including undeleting that critical report that’s due tomorrow which you accidentally deleted and emptied the trash on. Oops.  It will also work on problem flash memory cards and iPods, resurrect crashed Word documents, and attempt to bring back files from a formatted or crashed hard drive.  As long as the drive is still spinning, it is worth giving Recuva a crack at it.

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One Response to Favorite: Windows utilities from Piriform

  1. Pingback: Q. How do I get rid of ib.adnxs.com | CanadaRAM: Memory and Computer Q&A

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