A little Q & A

Q. I am paranoid about doing anything to my XP PC that may cause a problem. You often suggest using a hard disk cleaner called CleanUp and a registry cleaner called Regseeker. Are these programs necessary? What do they do and will they cause me any problems?

A. . CleanUp is relatively safe (99 per cent) as it simply cleans up cookies, internet history, and temporary internet files, etc. I use it daily and apart from freeing up disk space it reduces the risk of getting viruses and spyware from all the rubbish that is downloaded to your system every time you open a web page.

On first use, set the options to Standard and you should be fine. If in doubt, make a backup of valuable data. CleanUp will not greatly improve system speed and, while free, the author does appreciate donations. It works on XP and Vista.

Regseeker is also relatively safe (90 per cent) but it is more invasive as it cleans the registry of unused and obsolete entries. It makes a backup that can be restored if there is a problem. The only issue I have ever had was with a multifunctioning printer that refused to work after running Regseeker. I use it monthly and it typically removes 200-plus obsolete entries. The first time you run it you may be shocked - it will find several hundred items. It will improve system speed. It works with XP and Vista but you need to have administrator privileges (UAC) to run with the latter.

If you want to purchase a commercial program that does what CleanUp and Regseeker do, look at PC Tools Desktop Mechanic (www.pctools.com/desktop-mechanic). Commercial programs have a duty of care not to harm your PC and to provide user support. Free ones generally do not.

Warning: There are hundreds of free programs that all offer to do something marvellous. But Windows performs sufficiently well not to worry about memory and download accelerators, world time checkers, obscure cleaners, smiley faces or anything else. The strongest advice is that no one should load any so-called free program other than ones that I, or readers, have checked out and are pretty sure are OK.