It is amazing, the amount of junk that somehow accumulates on my computer. Bits and pieces of files are left behind every time I exit a program abnormally. Whenever I surf the Web, ghostly tentacles reach out and claim a few more megabytes of precious hard disk space. And every time I install a new program, more often than not, my computer becomes unwilling host to a heap of duplicate or extraneous files. This is where Norton CleanSweep comes in handy. It spring cleans your computer, removing clutter and turfing useless files. As a bonus, it includes a few utilities which enable you to better manage the software installed on your system.

How It Works

Once you install CleanSweep, Internet Sweep and Smart Sweep sit in your system tray monitoring any programs you install or download from the Internet, and recording any changes the installation makes to your computer. In addition, CleanSweep offers a range of cleanup utilities which you can invoke on demand or schedule to run at pre-determined times. CleanSweep groups these utilities under four functions, under an interface similar to that of other recent Norton products, such as Norton Internet Security and Norton SystemWorks.

• Cleanup includes Uninstall and Restore wizards, and Fast & Safe Cleanup. There are no surprises with the Uninstall Wizard - as you'd expect, it walks you through the process of removing programs from your hard drive. If Smart Sweep has monitored the installation of a program, removal is complete (or so I found). If Smart Sweep wasn't active during installation, CleanSweep can still make a pretty good stab at removing a program with the help of built-in database which records installation details of 1000+ programs. The Restore Wizard restores programs or files which CleanSweep has removed, back to their original states.
  
• Fast & Safe Cleanup does a quick sweep of your hard disk, disposing of files which are invariably safe to remove -temporary files, your browser cache, and files in the Recycle Bin. Fast & Safe Cleanup is a handy tool for a quick clean whenever you need to free some space in a hurry.
  
• Internet includes several utilities which clean up the residue left behind after an Internet session - temporary files, cookies, browser plug-ins, ActiveX controls and other programs installed off the Internet. As with Smart Sweep, Internet program cleanup is more thorough when Internet Sweep has monitored the original installation.
  
• Programs includes several wizards which enable you to organise the programs on your hard drive. There is Archive Wizard and Backup Wizard. Then there is Move Wizard that will move programs to a different drive or folder and Transport Wizard will transport them to another computer.
  
• Advanced includes utilities which clean the Registry, remove duplicate files, redundant DLLs and VBXs and files which are typically unused eg. screen savers, backups or fonts. There is also an Orphan Finder which finds isolated files left behind by past program uninstallations.

Normally, if you delete a file in Windows, it goes straight into the Recycle Bin, from which you can recover it until such time as Windows deletes it permanently. This still happens under CleanSweep, but you can choose to mark certain file types for protection; each time CleanSweep performs an operation that empties the Recycle Bin, Safety Sweep (whether on or off automatically transfers all protected files into the Norton Safe, where they remain until explicitly deleted. Alert readers will notice a loophole here - it is possible for Windows (or an unsuspecting user) to empty the Recycle Bin before

CleanSweep has a chance to transfer protected files over to the Safe. Even more alert readers will realise that regular and frequent scheduling of Fast & Safe Cleanup will help to minimize this risk.

Assessment

On its first run through my computer, Fast & Safe Cleanup freed over 90 MB of space on my hard disk using its default settings. By the end of a serious space retrieval mission, I had reclaimed over 300 MB of my hard disk. And that was just in the first week of using CleanSweep.

When uninstalling or moving programs, I found that CleanSweep worked best whenever Smart Sweep had monitored the original installation. Each time I uninstalled (or moved) something which pre-dated CleanSweep's installation, various traces were inevitably left behind. Similarly, when moving programs to other locations, the moved program didn't work properly. One of the programs I attempted to uninstall had entwined itself so tightly with my copy of Internet Explorer, that Internet Explorer no longer worked. Even restoration of the culprit program didn't set Internet Explorer back to working order, so I ended up having to reinstall it from scratch. Happily, each and every time I removed something whose installation CleanSweep had monitored, everything worked beautifully. The obvious conclusion here is that if you're uninstalling something which Smart Sweep didn't monitor, you're better of uninstalling it with the program's own uninstall feature.

All CleanSweep's features are available within a click or two. If you're a computer novice, the default settings are pretty safe and you can't go far wrong. Experienced users can customize CleanSweep's settings to suit their own comfort level. One feature I did find annoying was that I could select either a single file or the full list of files at a time; no choosing just a few. The mix of utilities is quite good, and I especially like Fast & Safe Cleanup, which I found myself using almost daily.

Overall, a useful set of utilities.


Minimum System Requirements

486 processor, Windows 95 or Windows NT 4.0, 8 MB RAM for Windows 95 16 MB RAM for Windows NT CD-ROM drive, 13 MB free hard disk space, 256-colour display.

Reprinted from the June 2000 issue of PC Update, the magazine of Melbourne PC User Group, Australia