The Czech leader in the world of computer security – avast!, has come with a new system cleaner and optimizer tool called avast! GrimeFighter. As the name of this software depicts, the tool is designed to fight the grime (meaning dirt or filth i.e., junk files, obsolete registry entries, toolbars, malware etc.) present on your PC. On the surface it looks like just any other junk file cleaner and system tweaker. But avast! GrimeFighter is a very merciless grime killing machine that reboots your Windows computer into Linux (downloaded from avast! servers) and deletes the locked files, system files, toolbars etc., that could not be removed from within Windows. Although using Linux makes it very efficient at removing junk off your PC, but it requires a huge download from the internet to start the cleaning process.
You can get avast! GrimeFighter from the avast! website. At present it supports all versions of Windows starting from Windows XP to Windows 7. Support for Windows 8 is going to be added very soon. The tool is completely portable, you can double-click on grimefighter.exe to launch it.
As soon as it is launched, it starts to scan your system for trash files, installed browser toolbars, startup entries and other things that could be slowing down your PC. It has many types of minions that look for specific types of grimes – Kobayashi looks for malware, Nikita looks for browser related junk, Dale Jumpshot Jr. looks for bloatware, Beef strengthens the security of various apps, Torque tunes up and optimizes Windows, Sir Jeffery analyzes hardware, Mario analyzes network settings for security & speed, Dr. Liza analyzes hard disk space, Zilch takes care of trash on your PC, Maximus researches new hacking trends and Holmes analyzes your privacy settings.
After the analysis is complete, it will show you the details of the grime detected on your Windows computer. On my test PC, it detected 928 MB of trash files, 2 web browser toolbars, 2 startup apps and suggested 18 registry tweaks to make the system faster. But that’s all the information you would see, there are no details to be seen. You cannot see which startup apps it is going to disable, which files are labeled as trash, which toolbars it has detected etc.
In order to start the cleaning and optimizing your PC, you can click on the Optimize My PC button at the bottom. This would start the download of a special version of Linux from avast! servers. This process can take a lot of time depending on your internet connection. After this, it will reboot your PC into the Linux and start the scanning once again. Unfortunately, you cannot actually clean or optimize your PC in the free version. The free version allows you only to scan, for the actual cleaning you have to subscribe for $40 / year license.
Conclusion: Though avast! GrimeFighter is a robust system optimizer that uses Linux to dig deep into your system to get rid of all types of grime that could be slowing down your PC, it is not free and is a little overpriced. The utility of such an application comes under a big question mark specially when modern operating systems like Windows 8 are coming with features to quickly refresh or re-install Windows.
You can download avast! GrimeFighter from http://www.avast.com/grimefighter.