PC Tune-up alternative?

[SlowOne]

I've loaded the AVG Virus software as recommended on here. It gave me the chance to use their PC Tune-up software, which seems to work well. My little notebook is now more hot hatch than shopping trolley!

Can anyone recommend a free version of this that I can run from time to time? I don't really want to pay for something (like virus software) when there may be a good, free alternative (like AVG Virus software!) available.

Thanks in advance for any advice.

[Dunc]

I don't think it is as comprehensive as the Tune-Up software, but CCleaner by Piriform does something similar – http://www.piriform.com/

[dodgydiy]

i'll second ccleaner, works very well, a very useful little tool, as for other tuneups, disable any startup programs that arent needed and stop the cursor and window animations.

[Whiskers]

What do these programs actually do when they "clean" your computer?

[MatJohnson]

Remove the rubbish from them, like old error logs and used updates. You can also clean your registry and get rid of rubbish from history and cookies from IE.

[Richard Lowe]

In my experience software like this does very little, you also need to be very careful as 99% of these 'tune up' programs are full of malware.

Also things like turning your wallpaper off or disabling aero/animations don't make any difference on reasonably modern machines, it's not like 10 years ago where PC's had less RAM than current smartphones