Quarterdeck's CleanSweep 4.0 excels at purging Net caches
CleanSweep 4.0 diligently catalogs your data clutter, empties your trash cans, alphabetizes your CD-ROMs and presents a laundry list of things needing repair. If you didn't buy its predecessors, check out this version. The Quarterdeck Corp. utility for Microsoft Windows 95 has resident programs called Smart Sweep and Internet Sweep that comb your hard drive for residual files left behind after deleting programs manually or via Win95's imperfect Add/Remove Programs.
CleanSweep 4.0
diligently catalogs your data clutter, empties your trash cans, alphabetizes your CD-ROMs
and presents a laundry list of things needing repair. If you didn't buy its predecessors,
check out this version.
The Quarterdeck Corp. utility for Microsoft Windows 95 has resident programs called
Smart Sweep and Internet Sweep that comb your hard drive for residual files left behind
after deleting programs manually or via Win95's imperfect Add/Remove Programs.
CleanSweep also monitors new programs during installation so it can wipe out all traces
of them whenever you wish. Neatniks will like the way it safely moves programs to
different folders and drives. That's harder than it sounds, because Windows squirrels away
pieces of programs in deep recesses.
One of CleanSweep's best features gets rid of Web pages and programs cached temporarily
on the hard drive as you surf the Internet.
For power users, CleanSweep shows simple views into the Win95 Registry information
database about every program on the computer. It helps safely remove duplicate Dynamic
Link Library files. But the views don't make the Registry any less confusing. An ideal
Windows utility would spare you from having to deal with the operating system backbone.
CleanSweep's useful archiving feature quickly compresses and decompresses programs you
don't use often. I shaved 10 megabytes by archiving a handful of dusty programs I couldn't
bring myself to uninstall.
CleanSweep 4.0 is similar to the previous version [GCN, Feb. 24, 1997, Page 30],
except in a few gadgety areas. Two programs recently bought by Quarterdeck from CyberMedia
Inc. of Santa Monica, Calif., UnInstaller and Remove-It, handle Windows-only functions
just as well as CleanSweep.
CleanSweep stands out because it reduces wasteful Internet file storage. If you surf a
lot with Microsoft Internet Explorer, you're familiar with ActiveX controls, the
self-downloading and self-executing programs that take up gobs of space and wreak havoc on
a PC unless held in check.
Internet Sweep doesn't stop them, but it does a good job of logging their activities.
It lets you uninstall ActiveX programs in the same way as other programs. That's a good
trend, because ActiveX controls cleverly hide themselves almost anywhere on a hard drive.
CleanSweep's Fast and Safe Cleanup does one-button cleaning of your Web browser's cache
and history, clears the recycle bin, gets rid of temporary files and axes lost clusters.
Set it up to work at prescheduled times or at start-up, and you'll chip away at desktop
clutter without eating up your time.
The Quarterdeck Safe protects certain file types from final deletion. For example, if
you want to be able to recover deleted .dll files, tell the safe to intercept such files
before they go to the Recycle Bin.
CleanSweep 4.0 works faster than CleanSweep Deluxe. An informal poll of CleanSweep
users found one-fourth of Deluxe users reported massive churning of the hard drive when
the resident Smart Sweep and Usage Watch were running. Version 4.0 seems to have done away
with that churning.
For an extra $20, you can buy CleanSweep's Extra Strength version, but the only
discernible difference is the Zip-It compression program. Zip-It performed poorly at
zipping files. I'd rather spend the extra money on the more robust WinZip from Nico Mak
Computing Inc. of Storrs Mansfield, Conn., or ZipMagic from Mijenix Corp. of Madison,
Wisc.
Dan Pacheco is a Washington computer reviewer and journalist.
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