Featured Freeware: CCleaner

Although it lacks a few of the bells and whistles found in other PC-cleaning applications, this free program offers more than enough features to make it a worthy download. CCleaner's interface is logically designed and makes it easy to wipe away your tracks from Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Opera, from various Windows system areas, and from some third-party applications.

CCleaner doesn't support the large number of extraneous programs that some competitors do, but it can erase traces from such popular programs as Spybot - Search & Destroy and WinZip. CCleaner now offers secure file erasing along with a Registry-cleaning utility that quickly scans for invalid entries before removing them. CCleaner can even back up your Registry before removal, in case it accidentally removes a crucial component, and the download includes a rudimentary feature for uninstalling any program on your machine.