avast! GrimeFighter is an optimization tool for Windows that cleans your PC. It scans your computer searching for programs that slow it down (spyware and adware, toolbars, viruses, etc.) and deletes them.
A team of minions to clean your PC
Avast! GrimeFighter includes different modules that can detect and remove all the ‘parasites’ that build up in your PC over time such as temporary files, registry errors, malware, and toolbars.
avast! GrimeFighter is quite unique in its kind: it deploys a small team of characters that could perfectly belong to a cartoon. These minions (controlled by Officer Pete, a mustached policeman) will be in charge of cleaning your computer. The tool tries to make a cleaning software as enjoyable and easy to use as possible.
How does it work?
The free version of avast! GrimeFighter doesn’t really let you do much. When you launch the tool for the first time, it scans your PC and provides a report with the problems it has detected. On our PC, avast! GrimeFighter told us it could get rid of lots of grime: 1.8 GB of unnecessary files, four toolbars, four bloated services, and eleven registry errors to fix.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t provide any details on what the causes behind these problems are. On the other hand, CCleaner, the most popular free cleaner, detected only 281 MB of grime but detected five times more registry errors.
Then comes the cleaning stage, and here is when you’ll have to proceed to checkout. GrimeFighter’s cleaning module isn’t free and you can choose between a one, two or three year subscription, which will grant you the right to an unlimited number of clean-ups during this period.
To clean your PC, avast! GrimeFighter will first reboot it. It will put your PC under sedation and boot in Linux. During this cleaning stage, you can’t use your PC normally.
The cleaning time can range from 30 minutes to two hours, so avast! had the good idea to incorporate a web browser into GrimeFighter, letting you browse the web while it cleans your PC. Some illustrations will help you learn more about the team of minions, and what they do while getting rid of all the grime.
When the cleaning is done, avast! GrimeFighter informs you of the actions taken and the space gained.
Is it worth paying for a subscription?
The fact that avast! GrimeFighter puts your PC under sedation and boots in Linux is very interesting: it provides access to many files that are not normally accessible when using traditional software. It also means that it can achieve a more thorough cleaning.
Avast! GrimeFighter, however, provides very few options and almost no information about what it has cleaned, as opposed to other free alternatives such as CCleaner or Glary Utilities. In terms of features, we feel that GrimeFighter is not quite worth its cost.
That said, avast! has made some significant advances in terms of the product’s usability and ease of use.
Download avast! GrimeFighter 9.0.0.59 in
