Slightly OT: Computer optimizers??

Awl --

Amazingly, despite being a confirmed pyooter ilitirit, there are some people
who know less than I do.
Lately, I've been looking like a bona fide pyooter maven amongst these
ilitirati, with the likes of Malwarebytes, AVG, WiseCleaner 365, etc.  Oh,
all free.  :)

But just recently, on
http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_other-security/windows-malicious-software-removal-tool-vs/29d68e24-9ce2-4554-bcb9-bb8ccc07cb2d
I read this reply:

----------
P.S.  If your security suite comes with a Registry Cleaner, Booster,
Optimizer, Enhancer, or whatever it may call itself, please either don't
install that part or at least don't use it.  Such products are poison to
your system.  None (I mean absolutely none of all the products available out
there that are actually legitimate) are truly worthwhile and will never go
near any of my computers or the computers of my clients.  Microsoft once
offered a product that included such a feature, but removed it and no longer
offer anything like it because even THEY couldn't get it to work properly
(and THEY had access to the actual OS code itself which nobody else does).
The "best" at most do very little.  Some can do a great deal of harm to the
point of needing a clean install of the Operating system.  The benefits just
aren't worth the risks.  You'll find all experts here in agreement on that.
Windows does a fine job of managing the registry on its own and doesn't need
help.  If you value your computer and your registry, you'll follow this
advice.  But it's your computer and the decision is yours.
-------------------------------------------

Now, I"ve been feeling like a jet fighter pilot with WiseCleaner, which can
take *giga*bytes off the pyooter, and does a disk optimization (after a
defrag), which appears to cut some scan times by a factor of TEN.  But the
above fellow seems to wary of all the registry and other cleanup stuff.
Wisecleaner also has this neat ditty, a boot booster/meter, which times your
boot time, and gives you options to speed it up.  Seems tho, that any
antivirus seems to double boot time.

But regarding cleanups, if you go to Accessories, even MS has a disk cleanup
utility, in addition to their defrag, so not all cleanups are risky,
apparently.

So what's the consensus here?  To clean/defrag registries etc or not??

Btw, Malwarebytes, in the above link, IS highly regarded, but strangely
enough, after running successfully on a number of computers (and helping
GREATLY with hijackings etc), is now causing one pyooter to crash....  after
working fine on that computer...    WTF???

It is finding, early in the scan, 20 malware infections (of the PUP kind),
then locks up.
I ran the MS malware removal tool, but it found nothing.

Any other free stuff like malwarebytes that people here like?

What's also interesting is that reviews of a given product are all over the
map....  it's hard tell, from websearches, who knows what the real story is,
and who is making shit up.  PC Mag routines has high ratings for products
that readers dislike, and vice versa.  Strange....

--
EA