I don't hold judgement actually, will have to agree with the two posters above me.
I do recommend anybody who uses anything already understand their system, have a basic knowledge of what is actually being done by those tools and has their backups and complete OS images on stand-by because once you delve into messing with internals of the OS it can be a nightmare to undo and like others have said can end up with an OS which just breaks more often than you would like or not even boot anymore.
CCleaner should be okay for generally cleaning junk files but do take care with the reg fix side of things, I tend to dump the reg file to my recovery drive before using a reg tool to clean up stuff which I simply cannot get removed, tho they are handy for things at times just they are quite risky. Powershell scripts yep obviously I would highly recommend you read the script files before you run them, they do come in individual scripts per job, understand how to comment out lines you don't need or don't want and deffo read up on how to restore removed apps and services. I use them but I do so because I have been using windows since 3.1 and every version of windows I have messed with services and the group policy but if you are not comfortable with self-diagnosis of issues I agree to stay away from the Powershell scripts.
To be honest, most of the stuff added to the OP was for users who have a decent enough understanding of the system to diagnose any issues without resorting to a full-reinstall, They are subjective to my opinion coming from another power user and script user I got pretty tired of tools which claim to increase performance but in the end marginally did so and added to the sucking up of CPU time with thread watchers and the like which is the reason I began using run once and forget tools and turned to PowerShell to do the work of un **** the OS to be more like a server OS and I would then go and refine a few things I did need by re-adding the service or app or whatever as needed, I definitely do not recommend using Powershell scripts if you have no idea what they are going to be changing scripts like these if not understood can create backdoors for intruders so look through the code of any script you run its just good practice.
I hap hazardly do things because I trust myself to fix it, most power users do, I have my full OS image recoveries and file recoveries on standby I would never suggest any major sweep of a system without them.
There is one olther tool which is pretty safe but again you kind of need some power user knowledge to make use of properly,
EmptyStandy List is great if you have one of those Windows installs which just eats memory, in pre 17xx build os windows 10 the system would keep memory in standby for excessive periods of time, gigabytes of it in fact. If you think you have this windows bug open up resource monitor from task manager click on the memory tab and check your used standby memory if fill the bar you probably have the issue.
The above program will force free that memory however it has to be manually run each time unless you set up a scheduled task which is why I said to make use of it properly you need some knowledge but you can just click it and run as needed too.
If going with automated route 5min-10min per run should do, no need to make it run too frequently. If your memory looks more like this -
https://i.imgur.com/qGIRP9X.png
Then you do not need to use the program, but I have mine running anyway on a 5min scheduled timer it is still useful while gaming to keep the memory pool refreshed.
I am definitely open to suggestions of process watchers, will check out the one linked above, as stated I had BitSum going for some time but it consumed 1-2% CPU to even do its job. I actually scored higher in benchmarks with its core engine disabled and that told me enough to tell me I should just remove it since I did give the benchmark tool FULL resource access and to be ignored by this process watcher. If you aim is simply to maintain a responsive system without a system deep dive well I still think it is one of the best process watchers out there don't let my words make it sound like trash because it is actually really really powerful and it does work very well out of the box.
But I fixed a lot of my issues by using scripts to simply disable stuff that was not necessary which also freed up memory thus the only use for a process watcher I have now is a lightweight one simply to auto set cores and priority of a process. I don't need smart trimming of memory or anything like that not after I deep dived my system.
Morkonan wrote: ↑Sat, 23. Mar 19, 19:00
Telemetry blockers, script deleters, "here are the shell processes you don't need" stuff can have you subject to having your box Windows OS randomly bricked ... Micro$oft telemetry for Win10 is all over the place, changes itself often, and blocking/walling those connections can have adverse effects including Micro$oft corrupting your latest updates for you...
So far I have avoided this, but I also do not allow windows to self install updates I do it all manually via PowerShell scripts which selectively pick just the Build updates and ignores the rest.
The tools do work very well tho, at least what they do can be undone.. thanks to the GUI of them, I added those ones because they are not simply scripts it does give you mouse over info on what the tick box is going to do and where to find the actual way to do it manually and they do create backups I believe Sys restore enabled. I would advise some common sense because end of the day like you said they are blocking connections to M$ now that was the intent but side affects often do happen it is just a matter of if you care that they happen lol.
I am happy enough to go and undo whatever if I need to, but most of the time I am happier that M$ is not getting their way lol.
I would use Ubuntu full time if not that getting games to run with ease natively is just a pain in the behind on Linux still.
There may be better tools around I just came across the ones listed after using a few of similar type stuff and found them to be the most simple and safest.
not from some sketchy url either.
Thanks for the suggestion to figure out dependency, will save some time doing manual checks for such or when I need to figure out what thing I disabled is causing what to not work anymore. Because I write scripts based of the ones I linked for an automatic run on fresh installs of Windows it would be way easier if I could iron out the dependency issues of some of the things ahead in the script as well. I would like to have it so when windows boots the script runs and offers a tick box for anything with possible wanted dependency like biometrics and or wifi scanners etc and be able to deselect those, while the core scripts remove bloat and deffo not needed services, services which are safe to set to manual or outright disable if you don't have a specific need to use that service.
I am unsure about Process Explorer, it is now re-branded as sysinternals and owened by Micro$oft.
I had a look at it is no where near as powerful as BitSum Process Lasso I mean would do the job of finding process's but the whole point of BitSum is to automate process restrictions.
BitSum has idle modes where it reduces power usage and lets processes you set to idle priority run it can automate a lot of these things, like setting process cores restrict and prority, it goes beyond this with even being able to restrict memory consumption on a per process basisl. It can if you enable such feature automaticlly reduce porcess priority while you run a demanding application then resume normal operation.
You can create high prority lists, it is actually REALLY GOOD! , just if you do not understand or have the time to reign in that power for your needs it can start to make things worse than better, if you simply install it set up a couple games as high priority or let the game detction do that for you and don't touch anything else out of the box it does what you expect keeps your system responsive 100% of the time even when malware infects your PC and tries to hog up the CPU it can help under that case too as it will kill the process or limit it so you can get control back.
I only stopped using it because under a lot of DEEP testing it was lossing me 200points in benchmarks lol due it needed a bit of cpu time to do all these things..
and as stated after I used powershell to de-bloat I did not need a complex process watcher anymore, I just need a automated method of setting process priority which maybe I can do with task schedules I have not looked into that tbh yet.
I just did not want a process watcher running in background when windows is already doing all this I just need something to force the native windows watchers to set priority a little differently for certain apps.