What's your routine like when you clean out your computer? What programs do you run and how often do you run them? Mine goes as follows and I do this about once a week: Disk Defrag CC Cleaner AdAware Malwarebytes Spybot S&D Im just curious as to what you other guys do. I'm wondering if maybe I'm missing a solid program that could help me.
That's about it really. All of those programs you're running are really good ones. I only run CCleaner, MalwareBytes, and occasionally a disk defrag. Now I'll break out SpyBot S&D and Auslogics Boostspeed (usually stolen for auslogics) if my system is really dogging it. Usually it's not though.
None for the most part. I stopped using spybot because I kept erasing the same exact stuff every time and just said screw it. Same goes with ad-aware and ccleaner (ccleaner had the added bonus of messing up my registry). I just use Windows's default cleaner and defragger. I prefer stopping junk before it hits me: Spyware Blaster Windows Defender/Microsoft Security Essentials Windows Firewall Adblock (also Noscript if you want to be more cautious) OpenDNS Customized hosts file
I'm hoping that OSX doesn't go that direction of needing so much maintenance software but it appears it's happening. Since there's no great malware/antivirus software for OSX all it'll take is one trojan or virus to completely rape every mac on the planet. Back when I was a PC-guy I used AdAware, CCcleaner, ZoneAlarm, Adblock, Spybot and reformatted probably twice a year.
I use Linux. su gksu nautilus anyways, for viruses download something called Hitman Pro, its free and it wont remove them for you if you don't pay but for some reason it will tell you exactly where the file is so you can manually delete.
I've gotten to the point I don't really use much of anything. I have superantispyware and malwarebytes and run Avira and/or Avast as a precaution, but they never find anything other than the usual cookies. I keep my temp files and stuff clean with ccleaner on bootup, but that's about it.
Other then an antivirus and firewall, I run CCleaner weekly to clean things up. As long as you know what and where you are DLing things from, you shouldn't need anything else. If any problems arise I would just reinstall windows.