Avast Cleanup Premium is a program from Avast that aims to speed up your slow computer. If your PC is sluggish, shows random errors, or just doesn’t run like it used to, you might benefit from a program like Avast Cleanup Premium.
This software is chock-full of features, as you’ll see below. It can fix errors, remove unnecessary files, delete programs, speed up boot time, and lots more. Your computer can quickly regain storage space and usability with this program.
What Does It Clean?
There are six categories of data Avast Cleanup Premium cleans within the Maintenance area of the software:
- Broken Windows Registry items: Delete entries in the registry — such as recent file keys, open-with keys, obsolete software keys, and shared library keys — that are no longer valid, which can help fix registry errors that could be slowing down file access.
- Invalid/broken shortcuts: Remove shortcuts that no longer to files or programs.
- System junk: Usually the biggest offender; system junk includes temporary files no longer needed, log files, and other junk that applications and Windows leave behind from installers and other tasks.
- Web browser cache: Another big performance slasher; deletes files stored by your web browsers that normally allow for faster website access, but if accumulated too much, can cause errors and even slow website access.
- Tracking & other cookies: Remove tracking cookies that websites can use to monitor your browsing habits and deliver specialized ads to you.
- Browsing and download history: Clear away the list of websites you’ve visited and the list of files you’ve downloaded.
However, although the name of the program mentions “cleanup,” it does way more than just clean junk off your computer. You can also uninstall programs, update programs, fix disk errors, and more.
How to Use Avast Cleanup Premium
There are several areas of Avast Cleanup that you should take a look at before committing to buying the program. As you can see in this image, all of them are listed on one single page to make accessing any feature super easy:
You can select any of those links to perform those actions. Below are details over what each of those areas of Avast Cleanup can do.
Start Maintenance Scan
The maintenance scan is a hub where you can access the cleaning functions related to various areas of your computer. Specifically, the ones mentioned at the top of this page.
Fix broken registry items, delete the browser’s cache, download history, and browsing history, etc.
Scan those areas, review the results and checkmark whatever you want to remove, and then hit Fix & Clean to delete all of the checked items.
Show Unnecessary Programs
Avast Cleanup can scan your computer programs and list the ones that maybe should be deleted. Users like you can rate the programs, too, which is precisely where the rating system comes from: users.
If you find a program on your computer whose safety you’re unsure of or you know you’ll never use it again, you can easily delete it with the MOVE TO TRASH button (something that you can undo later if you want with the Put back link).
Select the arrow next to the button to find the option to truly uninstall the software.
You can also use this part of Avast Cleanup to sort your programs by date used so that you can quickly find the programs you’re no longer using, which are probably the same ones you can uninstall to instantly regain hard drive space.
Show Background & Startup Programs
Programs that start up with Windows automatically have arguably the biggest impact on system performance. Open this screen in Avast Cleanup Premium to sort the startup programs and background processes by their performance-sucking severity.
Hit the SLEEP button next to any of the items to prevent them from starting with Windows, which will instantly provide more system resources (like memory and CPU power) for other startup items that you actually want or need to start.
For example, you might stop OneDrive from starting with Windows if you don’t use it anyway and if Avast Cleanup indicates that it’s slow to start.
There’s even a Put all to sleep link on this page to instantly halt everything from starting up. While this might be a drastic step, it’s important to know that it’s there.
Tip: The programs or services that you put to sleep are stored at the bottom of this same page (in the x program(s) sleeping area) so that you can easily re-wake them should you want them to start launching at startup again.
Clean Up System Junk
Computers generate lots and lots and lots of system junk. It doesn’t even take much time for this to happen. If you’ve never delete junk files in these areas of your PC, you’re in for a storage savings.
As you can see in the image above, you can delete junk files related to Windows setup data, old restore points, temporary files, and more like program log files, downloads, Windows cache files, and Windows history files.
Select any of those areas to further customize what in that section gets deleted. For example, for Windows setup files, you might see Update Cleanup Files and Software Distribution; you can keep or delete either, and even select those to see what will actually get removed should you delete them.
Check what you want to delete to speed up your computer, and then hit CLEAN NOW to do the job.
Clean Up Browser Data
If you’re just interested in a private browsing experience, use Avast Cleanup’s browser cleanup area to remove temporary web browser files like the history, cookies, and cached data.
The great thing about this feature is that you have full control over which browsers to clean, and they’re all in one place. Normally, you’d have to open each program and clean them individually.
Unfortunately, you can’t see the history, cookies, or cache before removing them, but with most people, it’s a keep or delete deal anyway.
Show PC Problems
The Show PC Problems shortcut in Avast Cleanup opens this Fix problems page that serves as a one-page list of any problems the program has identified that could be causing errors and other issues.
Select SHOW to to open Disk Doctor…
Open Disk Doctor
Fix disk-related errors with Disk Doctor. This tools scans any drive it detects and provides a way to correct corrupted areas of the drives.
Selecting SCAN NOW reveals a screen like this one while the drive is scanning:
When the scan is finished, you can see the details regarding the errors or attempt to fix them immediately.
Show Outdated Programs
Program updates are vital to keeping your computer patched for protection and your programs rich with new features. Avast Cleanup Premium can auto-update your software to ensure that they’re always updated.
Although it’s not recommended, you can also ignore program updates if you for some reason want to keep them at their current software version.
Extra Avast Cleanup Premium Features
Another feature in Avast Cleanup lets you see how you’re doing in regards to cleanup statistics. While it’s not necessary beneficial when it comes to speeding up your computer or correcting problems with your PC, it is informative and makes cleaning sort of like a game.
The other area we’ll look at here is how to undo cleanups you’ve recently made. You might do that if you’ve run into a problem after deleting some files with Avast Cleanup Premium.
Statistics
From the right side of the program, select the Statistics slide-out menu to see all the items the program has cleaned since you installed it, plus the amount of storage space you’ve regained and how many times programs have been removed or stopped from starting up with Windows.
Again, this isn’t much of a cleaning procedure in and of itself, but it’s really cool to see all your stats in one place. Use it as motivation to keep cleaning, and see how how you can get these numbers.
Rescue Center
Select UNDO next to any of these items to instantly undo what Avast Cleanup did to them. You’ll probably only need to do this for registry items that were deleted or programs that were moved to trash.
Important: It’s necessary to pay close attention to how your computer functions after cleaning it with this tool from Avast. If your PC behaves oddly or throws around some new errors, it might be because of something Avast Cleanup removed, in which case you can come to this screen to undo that task.
Avast Cleanup Premium Settings
This PC tuneup tool from Avast has several settings that let you customize how the program works. The most important setting of them all is probably the Automatic Maintenance option.
With this feature, you can tell Avast Cleanup Premium to automatically clear away all of the above data so that your computer is always decluttered, automatically. You don’t have to do anything but turn it on and forget about it. You can even choose which areas to clean and which to skip over (e.g., delete the browser cache and history in Chrome only, leaving the Internet Explorer history intact, but also remove all broken shortcuts and tracking cookies).
Avast Cleanup Premium can also keep your programs updated. In the Outdated programs area of the settings are three options: Fully automatic updates, Download only, and Check only. The last option (check only) is what’s enabled by default, so if you want your programs up-to-date, be sure to change this setting after you install Avast Cleanup.
Another important area of the settings is Rescue Center. Go there to enable the backup of the Windows Registry, list of startup programs, broken shortcuts, and more so that should something go wrong, you can restore those files.
Some less-interesting settings you can customize in Avast Cleanup include the program language, personal privacy option (sharing data with third parties for analytics), and notifications for every area of your computer that needs cleaned (i.e., be told when it’s time to do a cleanup).
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