BleepingComputer.com: Do I really need this prog?

Hi,I'm on AOL and signed up for a months free trial of their 'Computer Checkup Premium' program, and as the month expires soon I'm trying to decide whether to keep it. It'll cost me £4 (6 US dollars) per month which seems a bit steep.
I'm not too PC-literate, but the advertising tells me it 'cleans up my system' by doing assorted scans (Disk performance/Security/System drivers/Registry problems etc).
I've run it a few times, it takes about 5 minutes to strut its stuff and comes up with hundreds of 'problems' in red letters and asks me if I want to solve them, to which I click 'yes', and it goes ahead, but I can't see any performance increase in my PC afterward.
Shall I keep it? It's just the steep price that puts me off a bit, I mean i'd be paying the monthly fee forever!
Do I really need such a prog anyway? Are there any similar progs that do the same job for a one-off payment that'd be cheaper in the long run?
Thanks
I'm Win XP Home

I would bet that most of what it is finding are tracking cookies which you acquire every time you go to a new web site. Basically, you can achieve the same results with applications that exist already in your operating system. Defrag, disk cleanup, removal of cookies, etc...

If you have a good anti virus program and firewall you are fairly safe. The rest is periodic maintenance.

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Hi -
This is Very high cost for a job that can be done for free with ATF Cleaner by Atribune (just Google it) combined with a free Antivirus like Microsoft Security Essentials and a free Malware scanner like Malwarebytes Anti Malware -
I have NO paid security on my system at this time (have not for years) and I run very safely - You will find these are 90% scamware/scareware garbage that will actually do nothing to help your system -I hope you do take note of these replies and stop handing over your good money for nothing -

Thank You -

I think CCleaner and Defraggler can do that for you for free.

I would stay away from registry cleaner applications; they are very powerful and unless you really know what you are doing, they can "kill" your computer.
Windows comes with a set of utilities that can clean gunk off your hard drive and defragment your files. Many free Anti-virus and anti-spyware applications can delete cookies and malware safely and quickly and with the added bonus of preventing them.

Thanks guys, I've just cancelled it..
Just a couple more things-
I already have free AVG and free Adaware which I run periodically, will they clean gunk and tidy up my system or do I need a free cleaner-type prog besides?
I used free CCleaner for a long time after somebody told me I needed it, but later somebody else threw a scare into me by saying it might mess up my registry "unless I knew what i was doing" with it.
I didn't know what I was doing with it, so I uninstalled it, I never did know which of the zillion boxes to tick anyway.
In fact I seem to remember I posted in this very forum a while back asking which boxes to tick, but I don't think anybody replied (sniffle)

CCleaner is quit safe to use as long as the registry cleaner is not used.

I have always liked Cleanup. It is customizable but default settings will generally do the trick.

Disclaimer; Many free software now offer bundled third party software. These offerings are not critical or needed for the proper function of the original program. There install is generally not recommended.

This post has been edited by ThunderZ: 24 October 2010 - 06:01 PM

your avg has a real-time antispyware. if you have adaware (which i like) installed, it also has running processes. my guess is that they're antispyware also. i uncheck the box (lavasoft) in system config to avoid conflict. you may already do this.

ejames82, on 24 October 2010 - 05:59 PM, said:

Adaware isn't an anti virus, there is no conflict between the two.