Norton CleanSweep 2001

Norton CleanSweep is a program to safely remove applications from your PC, delete unnecessary or unused files, manage installed applications, and keep track of cookies, ActiveX controls, etc. 

The software comes on a CD and the installation didn't take more than five minutes on our Celeron 400 MHz machine with 96 MB RAM. At installation, you get the option of installing SmartSweep, which is enabled at startup, and
InternetSweep.

Both of these run in the background, and log and monitor activity in your system. SmartSweep logs all changes made to your system when you install a program. If you ever uninstall it, every single component of the program is removed. It creates a separate log file for every program you uninstall, which contains detailed information like number of files copied, components installed, registry entries, etc. InternetSweep monitors all ActiveX downloads from the Internet in the background. It maintains a log file for them, so you can easily remove them. You can install these now, or do it later from CleanSweep's Advanced options. Both Smartsweep and InternetSweep sit in the system tray after installation. 

You can access all options for CleanSweep from the Program menu. It has four sections-Cleanup, Internet, Programs, and Advanced. The Cleanup section has three different tools. An Uninstall Wizard lets you remove applications you don't need. Fast & Easy Cleanup lets you remove unnecessary files like Internet history, Temp files, Lost file clusters, etc. You just have to specify which type of files to remove and it will search the entire hard drive and calculate the amount of space it will free up.

You can also schedule it to automatically run after specified periods of time, like every other day or on startup, etc. The Restore Wizard lets you restore files and programs that you've backed up or archived using CleanSweep. 

The Internet section includes various Cleanup wizards for different things like cookies, cache, plug-ins, and ActiveX controls. Choosing an option shows you the list of components to delete. If you're unsure of what to delete, you can select Advice and it'll tell you more about the component you're going to remove. It also has a separate Internet Uninstall tool for uninstalling programs and ActiveX controls. 

The Programs section has four wizards to help you manage your currently installed applications. The Archive wizard lets you compress programs that you don't use frequently, but don't want to remove either. The Backup wizard lets you create a backup for any program. You can use the Move wizard to change the location of any program to a different directory or drive. The Transport wizard allows you to copy a program to another computer on your network. To do this, it forms a single backup file with an extension BUA on the remote computer. If you have CleanSweep on the remote computer also, you can restore this file on the remote computer to give you two working copies of the same application. 

Finally, the Advanced section contains various tools to clean your system registry of unused entries, find and delete duplicate files, delete redundant DLL and VBX files, and also search the hard drive for orphan files that have been left behind by removed programs. Norton CleanSweep is available for Windows 2000/NT/ME/98/95

Sachin Makhija at PCQ Labs