 | By Ryan Russell Great free and low-cost software can keep your browsing private, your temp files cleared out, and your system protected from malware. Some vendors deliberately make their free versions hard to find, but for such cases I’ll show you where to find the downloads — on the official sites or elsewhere on the Web. |
The no-cost way to clear out temp files
My May 28 column described ADDPC’s free Temp File Cleaner utility. It was recommended by Joe Montgomery, a reader who helps friends and associates with their PC problems for fun and profit. (You can download Temp File Cleaner from ADDPC.)
That column struck a chord with several readers who were good enough to share with me their favorite free cleanup tools. Mike Burns recommends IE Privacy Keeper, which — despite its name — works with Firefox, too. The program uses a traditional installer and is privacy-focused, as the name implies. For that purpose, it’s fairly thorough.
IE Privacy Keeper allows fine-grained control over which files you do and don’t delete. It also lets you customize file and Registry cleanup, so you can use the utility as your one-stop PC-maintenance tool. The program remembers your previous settings but takes a while to set up. IE Privacy Keeper is available from Browser Tools.
Robert Flanagan let me know about Temp File Deleter, a program he appears to have created himself. This tool is a lot more specialized and cleans a smaller number of locations than most other cleanup utilities, but it purports to find and remove temporary ActiveX downloads, bits of old Microsoft Office installs, and temp folders buried deep within your system’s files.
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