May 08

nCleaner Cleans Junk and Shreds Old Files and Space

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nCleaner is a system cleaner, much like CCleaner and Advanced SystemCare. However, nCleaner has a built in file and free space shredder, which is really helpful to protect your previously-deleted sensitive data.

Installing nCleaner

Installing nCleaner is simple and takes just a minute or two. To install nCleaner, download it here, double click on the installer file, and run through the setup (Figure 1.) Figure 2 shows the Choose Components screen. I advise using the context menu shortcuts as these can be very useful.

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Figure 1 - Installing nCleaner

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Figure 2 - Choosing optional nCleaner components

nCleaner Features

At first look, nCleaner may look to have limited features (Figure 3), but the program is packed with all kinds of tools that help you stay on top of things.

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Figure 3 - nCleaner start screen

Cleaning Your System with nCleaner

Clicking Clean System will bring you to the page shown in Figure 4. From here, you can clean your machine by clicking Clean Now.

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Figure 4 - Choose your options and clean your system

nCleaner found a lot of junk on my drive (Figure 5) and cleaned it all up for me.

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Figure 5 - nCleaner found a lot of junk files

After a registry scan, nCleaner found some errors (Figure 6) and cleaned them up for me too.

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Figure 6 - After a registry scan, errors are found

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Figure 7 - Problems fixed

Cleaning up Junk Files with nCleaner

nCleaner can scan your drive for junk and temporary files and clean them for you (Figure 8); however, I advise using caution with this feature because you may delete some important files. Scan through them first and ensure you are okay with deleting them. One of the biggest downfalls of this program is the lack of information it gives on junk file cleaning. A knowledgeable user should have no problem interpreting the output, but this isn’t sufficient for most users.

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Figure 8 - Cleaning junk files

Shredding Free Space with nCleaner

nCleaner shreds free space so any previously-deleted data will be deleted permanently. (You may be unaware that deleting data from the recycle bin doesn’t delete it permanently — it just dereferences the data.)

This feature is important if you are wanting to sell your PC or if, for example, you just deleted your last seven years of taxes from your PC.

From the main screen, click Shred Free Space (Figure 8)

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Figure 8 - Shred free space with nCleaner

Select the partitions/drives you want to shred the free space on (Figure 9.) Shredding may take an hour or more if you have a large hard drive.

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Figure 9 - Select the drives that you want to shred free space on

As data is shredded, your hard drive space will decrease as the free space is in use (Figure 10.)

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Figure 10 - Your free space decreases temporarily as the space is shredded

After the shredding is complete, you can be assured your privacy is protected.

Overall, nCleaner is a great program with impressive features. This program may not be for the novice user, but I am confident anyone can try it. Just set a restore point before clearing up too much “junk”.