Portable Tools – WinPatrolToGo & CCleaner

This post was written by admin on September 21, 2009
Posted Under: PC Security, Portable Tools, Technology

There are many portable programs for PC Security that can be installed on a USB stick or burnt to CD which are small in size and very easy to use.

I shall be adding a few that are popular and also free over the coming weeks. Depending on what the program is and what it does I shall add video tutorials, some will have a single post entry but I will start with two entries which are very popular and very easy to use - WinPatrolToGo and CCleaner.

WinPatrolToGo is the ‘little brother’ to WinPatrol and is very lightweight and easy to use. It is very compact, the download is only 585KB and it is ready to run.

It can be downloaded either directly to a usb stick or to your Desktop and simply ‘drag & drop’ the file to the usb device. Simply double click to run and the user interface opens. It will list Startup Programs which can be disabled or removed completely from Startup.

Active X will show what components are being used and can easily be disabled if not needed. IE Helpers show Browser Helper Objects and Toolbars which can be removed. Scheduled tasks lists all tasks that are scheduled to run and can also be removed. Services list all services on the users computer and whether they are running and the Startup type, be it manual or automatic, Active Tasks shows all running tasks and in the case of malware infections, the task can simply be killed.

Under the Options tab users can view the WinPatrol Log which will open in a browser window and list all of the above with extra information, further information can also be found by double clicking the item in WinPatrolToGo. A Spreadsheet Report can be created which is ideal for troubleshooting along with a HiJackThis Logfile to submit to HiJackThis Forums. The Hosts file can also be viewed and with many malware infections that redirect browser searches, this can provide information about the Hosts which will have been changed.

Users can also View History and Export Settings as well as allowing PLUS info data collection. No Personal information is divulged.

Under the PLUS tab, users have the option to upgrade to the PLUS version which applies to all versions of WinPatrol for a one time fee of $29.95 USD. I do recommend that users consider upgrading as the program monitors changes being made to users computers which can be blocked rather than having to clean them after infection.

This is not a sales pitch, I’m not an affiliate but do believe that this is one of the few programs that users should upgrade athough the free version does work well, the upgraded version has slightly more functionality.

This program works on all Windows systems from Windows 98 through to Windows 7 and supports 64Bit systems.

Download WinPatrolToGo here

CCleaner Portable is a superb Windows cleaning tool. It removes junk files and cookies after browsing. Malware can also hide in Temp files and CCleaner offers an easy way to clean them out.

The download is a .zip file, which needs to be extracted to your usb device or CD. On my usb stick I crated a separate folder to install CCleaner and extracted the files from my desktop to the folder.

This supports all Windows OS and also has 64Bit support. The zip file is 1.01MB and the installed version of CCleaner is 1.06MB and the folder size is 2.75MB.

Once installed, simply double click to run just as you would the full version. There is no difference between the two but no Yahoo Toolbar option to untick when installing the portable version.

Used regularly, it can recover wasted space on your drive which is taken up by Cookies, Temporary files, Index .dat files and many more.

If you save your passwords, which is a very bad idea, do NOT tick the Autocomplete Form box or you will lose them. I use Keepass Password Manager to store my passwords on a usb stick, much easier than having to remember them.

Click Options then Settings on the user interface and select your language, ensure that Automatically check for updates is ticked and also change the Secure Deletion, the default is Normal, which is one pass.

Secure file deletion can be changed to 35 passes using the Guttman Algorithm which will make any files deleted almost unrecoverable. Be careful if using this method that you do NOT delete any important files, photos, music etc without having made a backup copy first.

It also has a Registry Cleaner which will create a backup before removing any entries. In my experience I have found that it has removed some necessary entries which stopped a few programs from running, so I prefer to use Auslogics Free Registry Cleaner (link below) and Windows Live OneCare safety scanner, simply click on the broom icon -- Cleanup or click here for Windows Vista and Windows 7.

When running CCleaner ensure that ALL browsers are closed. Some files will not be removed until the computer is shut down or rebooted as they are locked by the system.

Download CCleaner Portable here

Download CCleaner Portable for U3 compatible thumbdrives here