User s Guide. Foreword

Transcription

1 User s Guide Foreword SlimCleaner Plus is the premium edition of SlimCleaner, a powerful, comprehensive utility that combines the best IT tools. It s designed assist computer users, technicians, and support personnel with the task of cleaning and optimizing a computer s operating system. SlimCleaner Plus uses cloud technology to analyze the software configuration of a computer and make recommendations based on collective research from IT professionals, technicians, and computer users around the world. Optimized for Windows, SlimCleaner Plus can help greatly improve the performance and security of Windows XP, Vista, 7 and Windows 8. This user guide is designed to show how to use SlimCleaner Plus and to explain what each utility in the SlimCleaner Plus suite of applications does and how they work.. Use the linked table of contents to navigate to a specific section or proceed through the user guide sequentially. Its layout emulates the progression of tools in SlimCleaner and is organized from top to bottom by the utility tabs on the left hand side of the program.

2 Contents SlimWare User Community Rating Software... 3 How Does SlimCleaner Plus Use Cloud Technology?... 3 Where do Ratings Come From?... 3 I have opinions, how can I participate?... 4 Navigating SlimCleaner Plus... 5 Dashboard... 6 Scan Status... 6 One Click Scan... 8 Scan Settings... 9 Cleaner Customizing the Cleaner Optimizer Startup Services Restore Updates Software Windows Browsers Disk Tools Summary Disk Analysis Disk Wiper Shredder Defragger Duplicate File Finder Windows Tools Settings Updates Help

3 SlimWare User Community Rating Software SlimCleaner Plus is powered by the people that use it. The recommendations that SlimCleaner Plus provides are made possible by thousands of everyday computer users and technical experts that share their experience and knowledge. SlimCleaner Plus enables users to share this information online in the SlimWare community, a free social network focused on helping everyday users clean and optimize their computer systems. It also enables users to share information directly in the SlimCleaner Plus application. By using a special rating tool, contributors provide additional information about new software and qualify it with personal recommendations. You can join our social community by registering with us online. Register for a free user account, and you can submit ratings and comments for software items directly within SlimCleaner Plus. Your input is fed directly into our dynamic database where it is stored and made available for others to see. Your participation gives you a say in how our programs work. To do this, all you have to do is register. It s quick, easy, and free. To start a new account, click here. How Does SlimCleaner Plus Use Cloud Technology? SlimCleaner Plus utilizes crowd-sourced, community feedback to provide the best recommendations for optimizing your computer. Using feedback provided by real users means that SlimCleaner Plus can provide only tried and tested system optimizations. SlimCleaner Plus then distributes this data via cloud technology, allowing anyone with an installed version of SlimCleaner Plus to obtain the latest definitions instantly. Where do Ratings Come From? SlimCleaner Plus uses the crowd-sourced data to codify each scanned item with a color, based on its usefulness. This color rating is determined by the community and is based upon an aggregate of votes that are submitted both in-app and online. Ratings are supplied by a wide demographic of users, including both everyday PC owners with no advanced computing skills and technical experts. How do I know the reviews SlimCleaner Plus provides are accurate? To produce the most accurate ratings and optimization suggestions, we implement layers of checks. In addition to our staff of tech experts, we employ a second tiered rating system in our community. It enables users to up-vote the best ratings and down-vote the bad ones, thereby picking out the good ratings and eliminating the bad. 3

4 I have opinions, how can I participate? The in-app rating system lets you to rate software items using a color-coded system that makes it easy for others users to distinguish the GOOD from the BAD. 1. Whenever you see the color-coded rating widget, you can provide a rating, description and reason for the software item listed next to it. The more software items that you rate, the more precise SlimCleaner Plus becomes. 2. Rate the software based on its legitimacy as useful software (green), optional (yellow), or unwanted / malicious (red). Or use the colors in between to set your perception of the software s necessity, either to your computer s operation or its importance to your personal uses. 3. Once you ve rated the software item, put it in a category that best describes its purpose and then pick a general reason why you gave it the rating you did. 4. You can then optionally provide a detailed reason that explains why you gave it the rating you provided. This will help others to judge whether or not the information you provided is relevant to them. 5. Once you ve completed the rating form, click Save to finish and return to SlimCleaner Plus. 4

5 Navigating SlimCleaner Plus SlimCleaner Plus features a fast and responsive user interface. You can easily navigate the different pages of the program by way of the accordion menu on the left-hand side of the window. Each item in the menu will take you to the utility it lists when clicked. Some items will expand to reveal further modes of the utility you are attempting to navigate to. Dashboard The Home Screen for the application. Status Gives a brief look at the system status. Click Scan Deep scan of the system for all possible optimizations. Scan Settings Configure the settings of the 1-click scan. Cleaner Advanced junk file cleaner and registry optimizer. Optimizer Optimize the operating system. Startup Manage the OS startup processes. Services Manage the OS background services. Restore Restore changes. Software Manage, rate and uninstall programs on your computer. Updates Software Download and install available software updates. Windows Download and install available Windows updates. Browsers Manage and configure browsers. Internet Explorer Manage and configure Internet Explorer. Mozilla Firefox Manage and configure Mozilla Firefox. Google Chrome Manage and configure Google Chrome. Disk Tools Optimize hard disks and reclaim storage space. Disk Analysis Disk Wiper Shredder Defragger Duplicate Finder Windows Tools Quickly access Windows native tools. 5

6 Dashboard The dashboard is the panel you see when you first launch SlimCleaner Plus. It is the central hub from which you can monitor your system s overall status and assess the health and security of your machine. You can also make a few quick changes here and initialize some of the powerful utilities included in SlimCleaner Plus. Scan Status On the Status Dashboard, you will first notice the Scan Status and a set of gauges. The Scan Status and gauges give you a brief glimpse of your computer's status, as determined by SlimCleaner Plus, by using color-coded positions. Each position indicates the state of your PC on a scale (red:improvements possible, green:good). The gauge readings and the corresponding Scan Status are determined by SlimCleaner Plus s proprietary technology which evaluates the results as an aggregate from all 8 areas included in the One Click Scan. 1 Junk unnecessary junk data that consumes disk space and may impede system performance 2 Privacy data that may contain traces of activity history or personally identifiable information 3 Registry invalid or obsolete registry entries. 4 Browsers browsing data that may impede browser performance, and potentially unwanted addons that may diminish performance and pose a threat to online privacy/security 5 Optimizer potentially unnecessary startup processes, scheduled tasks and services that may impede computer performance 6 Security security settings that may not be configured properly for maximum system protection 7 Updates available updates for Windows and other installed software that may patch security vulnerabilities, fix bugs or add features 8 Software unnecessary or potentially unwanted software that may consume resources or create vulnerabilities Each of these areas scanned by SlimCleaner Plus One Click Scan may impact system performance, security and overall health in various ways. The One Click Scan uses a combination of proprietary technology and the power of crowd sourced assessments to provide the best recommendations for users, enabling them to make safer, more informed decisions about PC maintenance. 6

7 The evaluation of the aggregated results of these areas results in a gauge reading and corresponding Scan Status. Here are the Scan Statuses that you may see in SlimCleaner Plus Status is Good system status is good. no issues found. Status is Medium a few areas for improvement found Status is Low system may need cleaning or optimization Status is Poor system may need cleaning or optimization Unknown you need to run a scan to assess the system status The Scan Status will reflect the Overall or Scan Results gauge Status. By default, the Scan Status and gauge will be set to UNKNOWN at the first start of the program because One Click Scan has not yet evaluated the health of the system. You can immediately take action to analyze your computer by clicking the One Click Scan button. This will start a scan which will make a full assessment of your system and provide you with a report of available optimizations to improve your computer; or, you can continue exploring the interface. (To configure scan settings, click the gear icon in the button.) 7

8 QUICKLAUNCH From the Dashboard you can quickly access several utilities in SlimCleaner Plus. Click/Tap on the labeled tiles to navigate to their respective pages. SYSTEM PERFORMANCE Personalize system performance based on your needs by enabling a custom System Performance Mode from the widget on the dashboard. You can enable Power Saver mode to preserve precious battery life when on-the-go, or Turbo mode to maximize system performance. You can always revert to the default, Windows power plan from this widget. DISK OVERVIEW Get a quick look at the status of your hard disks from the Disk Widget on the Dashboard. Click the arrows in the widget to view the status for each drive installed in your computer. You can quickly access the Disk Tools in SlimCleaner Plus by interacting with this widget. One Click Scan The One Click Scan is the most powerful utility in SlimCleaner Plus. The One Click Scan runs a deep scan of your computer that incorporates all of the utilities within SlimCleaner Plus. It generates a report that lists all of the optimizations that you can enact to enhance the performance, stability and security of your computer. 8

9 The scan includes junk files, system optimizations, software updates, browser add-ons, driver updates, and windows updates. To begin the scan, click the One Click Scan button. You can configure custom search parameters for each of these categories in the Scan Settings. You can also disable scanning for a specific category outright by un-checking the box next to the listed entry. To configure settings for a specific category, click the Settings link next to the scanning category you wish to configure. To fully customize your scanning options, click the gear icon in the One Click Scan button, or click Scan Settings under the Dashboard in the main program menu. Scan Settings You can configure the settings for the One Click Scan in this form. There are three modes for configuring the scan settings: Easy Scan, Deep Scan, and Custom. Easy Scan mode includes junk files only Deep Scan mode includes junk files, and files that contain personal information. Custom scan mode enables you to configure each category of the scanning procedure to your preference. You can undo any custom settings you select by clicking the Defaults button to restore to default scan settings. With Custom scan mode enabled, click on each tab of the Scan Settings form to display the subcategories within each view and check/uncheck the options that you wish to enable/disable scanning for. 9

10 OTHERS TAB In the Others tab, you can specify special categories you want to assess, including software updates, system optimizations, and browser add-ons. These are user-selected entities and so SlimCleaner Plus lets you customize the amount of information that you want cleaned. The One Click Scan will display results based on the threshold that the user selects in this form. By default, the program will search for a mid-range level of updates and optimizations. Increasing the threshold will display the maximum number of available updates and optimizations, while decreasing it will reduce the number of results. Select the scanning threshold based on your preference. 10

11 Cleaner The first utility in SlimCleaner Plus is the Cleaner. The Cleaner is an advanced junk file and registry cleaner, designed to quickly and easily recover large amounts of disk space and also increase system performance by cleaning up working space used by the operating system. It can be set to delete... unused junk files files containing personally identifiable information obsolete registry items. The main form of this utility looks much like the settings page for the One Click Scan. That is because the One Click Scan includes the functionality of this utility. However, the Cleaner can be configured, and run independently from the One Click Scan for more detailed customizations. Customizing the Cleaner Configuring scan settings for the cleaner is just like configuring scan settings for the One Click Scan. Click on each tab, and review the options available, making any changes as per your preference. 1. When you are ready to begin the scan, click Analyze to scan and review the results; or, click Auto Clean to automatically clean all items found by the Cleaner. 2. The Cleaner will display the results of the scan in a list organized by the same categories you selected when reviewing the scanning options. You can view the individual files to be deleted in a given category by double-clicking the list entry for the category you wish to expand. 3. If you find a file in the scan results you want to preserve, right-click the list entry and select Ignore this file. SlimCleaner Plus will not include this file in future scans. 4. If you want to stop what to go back to adjust your scanning customizations, you can back out of the list you are in, by clicking the Back button. Once you are at the results overview, You can click the Back button again to clear the results and begin a new scan. 5. If you are ready to clean the items that the Cleaner utility has found, click the Clean button. 11

12 Optimizer The second utility in SlimCleaner Plus is the Optimizer. The Optimizer is an advanced system tweaking utility that utilizes our cloud distributed, community rating system to implement changes to system settings that may improve system speed and efficiency. The color-coded rating system simplifies the decision making process and allows you to act with confidence when facilitating the optimizations that this utility suggests. You can also use the rating widget to supply your own feedback to the community. FILTERING RESULTS You can filter the results of this utility by using the large, color-coded slider to filter list results by their rating. To view items with a Good rating or less, select the dark-green position on the filter bar. To view only unwanted/malicious items, select the red position on the filter bar. Additionally, you can further filter the results of the Optimizer by using the Search bar to filter results based on your search parameters. This is the easiest way to filter a specific item you are looking for. Startup The Startup Optimizer lists all of the programs and background processes that starts when your computer boots. The Optimizer codifies each item with a color that corresponds to its rating, as provided per SlimWare Community consensus. Scroll through the list of startup items, reviewing each one before deciding if it is necessary for startup. Check the box next to each item that you wish to remove from the computer s startup. If you are uncertain about an item, or need more information, click the More Info button to display more detailed program information and community feedback. 12

13 This will launch an info brief on that item, with a description, ratings and reviews made via the SlimCloud community. Once you have made your selections, click the Remove Selected button to remove the selected items from startup. You can restore any startup items you have removed from the Restore mode of the Optimizer. Services The Services Optimizer lists all of the services in Windows. You can disable services in this list by checking the box next to your selections and then click the Remove Selected button. Most services are installed to support some kind of system functionality, so be careful in your selections. If you are uncertain, click the More Info button to learn more about the service you are considering. If you make a mistake, you can restore any services you disable in the Restore mode of the Optimizer. Restore The restore tool lets you put back items that you removed from the Startup and Services mode of the Optimizer. To put something back, check the box next to the items you wish to restore and then click the Restore Selected button. 13

14 Software Third in the SlimCleaner Plus toolbox is the Software Utility. The Software Utility makes it easy to manage installed programs. This utility integrates the cloud distributed, community rating system in its interface to provide recommendations for installed software packages. Users may request community feedback for a given software item in order to make more educated decisions before uninstalling software. For example, the community knowledge base may be consulted to determine if a suspicious program is potentially malicious, bloatware, or simply an oem package. The Software Utility displays all of the software installed on your computer, except for Windows updates. You can use this tool to audit your system for unwanted software and uninstall any undesirables. SlimCleaner Plus makes its recommendations whether to keep or remove software by referencing the community rating for the given item. To view more information about a given software item, click the More Info button. To uninstall a software item in the results list, check the box next to the entry and click the Uninstall Selected button to initialize the installer for the software items you are attempting to remove. Follow the instructions in the software s proprietary installer package to remove it from your system. SlimCleaner Plus will initiate each installer for you. Show Windows Updates This button in the Software Utility toggles the display of all Windows updates installed on your computer. Once enabled, this button changes to Hide Windows Updates, allowing you to toggle the display of Windows updates to disabled for easier navigation of software installations. You can uninstall and get more info on Windows updates the same way as you can with regular software installations view the Uninstall Selected and More Info buttons respectively. Updates The fourth tool on the Dashboard is the Updates Utility. This tool can detect when updates are available for your software by accessing SlimWare s cloud database. The program checks the version of the currently installed software against the latest version in our database and offers an update if one is available. Software This mode of the Updates utility checks for updates for your installed programs. Each entry in the list shows the currently installed version and a newer version available from the cloud database. If there is an update available, click Update Now next to any given software entry to begin the downloading the update for that application, right from inside SlimCleaner Plus. 14

15 To receive more information on the software item in question, click the More Info button. Windows This mode of the Updates utility checks for certified Windows updates, updates published by Microsoft that support system functions and tools, including security updates. Browsers The fifth tool in SlimCleaner Plus is the Browsers utility. This tool is useful for managing the internet browsers installed on your computer and provides support for Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox & Google Chrome. You can use this utility to... set the home page set the default search provider manage extensions, BHO s, ActiveX objects, and other browser components. To manage settings for your browser, click on the dashboard icon for your browser. You can change the home page and the default search settings with the widgets at the top of the form. Using the filter widget, you can manage toolbars, extensions, add-ons and plug-ins. Each tab allows you to selectively Remove an item. This disables it until you re-enable it using the Restore tab. 15

16 Disk Tools The sixth item on the dashboard is a collection of utilities called the Disk Tools. This is a group of utilities in SlimCleaner Plus that are designed to reclaim disk space and optimize your hard disks for better performance and storage capacity. Summary This tool shows a brief summary of your computer s hard disks. Here you can get a quick glimpse of how much free space is left in your drives. To get a more detailed analysis of the selected hard disk, select an individual drive and click Analyze. Disk Analysis This tool provides an in-depth analysis of disks that you select in the Summary. The analysis will present you with disk usage information that details the largest files on the drive, allowing you to identify what is consuming the most space on the disk and potentially reclaim the space by removing unnecessary files. To analyze a hard disk, select one from the list and click Analyze. Disk Wiper This tool is designed for to completely and thoroughly remove all the data on a disk, while securing it against recovery by overwriting it with bytes of data. The user may opt to overwrite the disk multiple times for greater security against any possibility of recovering the old data. 1. To wipe data on a hard disk, select it from the list of available drives by checking the box next to the entry. 2. Then, select from the drop-down menu the number of times you wish for the drive to be overwritten. 3. Finally, select from the drop-down menu whether you wish to overwrite only free space, or the entire drive. 16

17 » WIPING FREE SPACE IN A DRIVE Wiping free space will not compromise your data. It will force the disk wiper to only overwrite disk space for which there is no data presently. This is a good option if you just want to make old data unrecoverable.» WIPING A DRIVE For a more thorough cleaning, you can opt to overwrite an entire drive. To prevent damage to the system, the Disk Wiper will not allow you to wipe the system drive (the partition of your hard drive that holds the operating system), only the free space. It will let you wipe non-system drives, including external hard-drives and portable media, such as flash drives. 4. When you have made your selections, click Wipe to begin the procedure. 17

18 Shredder The shredder tool gives users an ability to wipe disk space for select files and/or folders. This utility is designed to thoroughly and securely wipe data that the user wishes to render unrecoverable. This is very useful for sensitive documents and/or other personally identifiable information. This mode works much like the Disk Wiper, but provides options for adding files and folders instead of performing operations on whole disks. 1. To add files to the shred list, click the Add Files button. To add folders, click the Add Folders button. If you want to remove a file or folder that you have mistakenly added, click it s entry in the list and then click Remove Selected. 2. Once you have selected the files and folders you wish to shred, click the drop-down menu and select the number of times you wish to wipe the selected data. 3. Once you have made all of your selections, click the Shred button to begin the procedure. Defragger The Defragger is an advanced hard disk defragmentation utility designed to reorganize data clusters in the most efficient way possible. The Defragger improves disk performance by consolidating relative data clusters in proximity to one another in order to decrease disk read and write times. This results in an overall improved hard disk. To defrag your hard disk, click the drop-down menu and select the disk you wish to defrag. Once you have selected the disk you wish to defrag, click Analyze Disk to perform a preliminary analysis of the disk s fragmentation. Alternatively, you can begin defragging immediately by clicking Quick Optimize or Full Optimize. The quick optimize defrags relative data clusters and groups them together for faster disk speeds, but the full optimize will reorganize the data further to increase overall disk performance. 18

19 Duplicate File Finder The Duplicate File Finder enables the user to scan the computer for duplicate files for the purpose of deleting potentially unnecessary copies in order to reclaim valuable disk space. You can search for duplicate files by either drive or by folder(s). Select which scope to set the file finder to by clicking on either the Drives or Folders radio button. The form below will reflect the options available to you. Searching by folders enables you to add specific folders to scan for duplicate files. Searching by drives enables you to scan the entire drive for duplicate files. 19

20 For this example, select the drive(s) you wish to scan and then click Next. Scanning by drives may be further configured in the next form. There are 3 scanning modes... Easy Scan is the slowest, but detects duplicates with the greatest accuracy. It assesses each file in the computer by its unique makeup. This option finds true duplicates no matter how they re labeled. Moderate Scan is faster, but not as detailed as Easy Scan. It takes the way files are labeled into consideration to help isolate duplicates more quickly. Quick Scan is the fastest, but is the least detailed. It takes only the files labels and relative sizes into consideration. It does not assess the internal makeup of a file. After selecting a mode for file comparison, you can specify additional parameters to your search, such as Ignoring files in a certain size range (in megabytes) Searching for all or only a certain set of file types Excluding certain locations from the scan. 20

21 By default, system files and program files are excluded from the scan to prevent deletion of system critical files. Once you have made all of your configurations to the search parameters, click Next to begin the scan. Alternatively, you can click Back to cancel and start over. Windows Tools This is a handy toolbox for quickly accessing all of the most commonly used snap-ins and power user interfaces in Windows. Use the Windows Tools to quickly access built-in Windows management services, without having to hunt for them on a computer, including the device manager, the event viewer or the task scheduler. 21

22 Settings To change settings for SlimCleaner Plus, click the Settings button in the top-right navigation panel. In the settings menu, you may change options for several aspects of the program, including, how junk files are detected preservation of browser cookies scheduling of automated cleaning. In the Settings menu, you can also reset the default settings for SlimCleaner Plus and view program log files. Whenever you make any changes, click the Save to finalize them. General The General Settings dialog allows you to change miscellaneous settings for SlimCleaner Plus. Here you can: enable/disable the feature that starts SlimCleaner Plus on Windows startup specify whether or not to check for updates when the program starts configure the alerts that SlimCleaner Plus is allowed to show you. 22

23 Cleaner The Cleaner Settings dialog allows you to configure how the junk cleaner scans for temporary files. You may also disable the alert displayed before cleaning files, and manage the Ignores that you have added from the cleaner results. The junk cleaner will ignore any file paths that are in the ignore list. Cookies The Cookies Settings dialog allows you to manage your saved cookies. The junk file cleaner will remove all cookies by default, but you may opt to keep cookies for web sites that you visit often.» Known Cookies will display cookies which SlimCleaner Plus detects, but have not been excluded.» Excluded Cookies lists all the cookies you have told SlimCleaner Plus to keep. You can add a custom domain to the exclusion list in this menu also. 23

24 Registry The Registry Settings dialog allows you to manage and restore registry backups and registry ignores. BACKUPS - Whenever you run the junk cleaner, any and all deleted registry keys are backed up for security. This gives you the option to restore them if needed. You can restore any of the deleted registry keys by selecting a backup from the list and selecting Restore. In the Registry Settings dialog, you can also delete old backups if you think they are unnecessary. Please note, you should be certain before deleting backups. Deleted backups of registry ignores cannot be recovered. To delete a backup, select it from the list, and click Delete. IGNORES Before you run the junk cleaner, you ve given the option to ignore registry entries you specify. Doing this, tells the junk cleaner to leave those entries alone. You can manage the items you tell the junk cleaner to ignore in this dialog as well. By deleting an ignore command, you tell SlimCleaner Plus to re-list the item when it scans for things to be cleaned. To delete a registry ignore, select it from the list, and click Delete. Schedule The Schedule dialog lets you program SlimCleaner Plus to run a one-click-scan on a routine interval. It also allows you to view logs of previous scans. 24

25 Updates will provide updates to SlimCleaner Plus when they become available. The program will check for these updates automatically when started, but you may check for program updates manually by clicking the Update button in the top-right navigation panel. Help provides premium support for SlimCleaner Plus. Subscription holders for SlimCleaner Plus receive the highest level of support offered by. To get help or receive support for SlimCleaner Plus, click the Help button in the top-right navigation panel of the program for a menu of help options. The Help menu has a few shortcuts which will provide you with the type of help that you want to receive. Online Help will direct you to the community forum where you may ask questions and receive answers from other users and support specialists. Video Tutorials will direct you to the YouTube page where you can view instructional videos for the use of SlimCleaner Plus. Manual will direct you to this manual which you are reading now. Live Help will direct you to the portal for receiving Live support from support specialists. This is the fastest way to get help with SlimCleaner Plus but is reserved for subscription holders only. 25