Just as regular exercise is good for your health, a regular workout for your hard disk is recommended. Windows has its own tools for doing this, but CCleaner makes a slightly better job of it.

The application is free to use and shows the door to all kinds of temporary files, from temporary internet files to old automatic back-ups from application such as Office XP and file sharing software. It also shakes out old entries from your computer's registry, such as unistallers and invalid shortcuts. The makers guarantee that it contains no apyware or adware.

CCleaner is one of the more popular system cleansing and optimisation tools available. This is the major v2 release incorporating a number of new enhancements. For instance, the new version is completely re-written and is much faster and analysing and cleansing your system. It ships with a brand new user-interface and is available in a compact version, so you could take it with you on a portable USB stick and use it to cleanse a PC that you've used in a web cafe or other location. Of course, there are also a number of other tweaks and improvements.

Note that this is the portable version of CCleaner.