PCMesh Internet and Disk Cleanup is a utility to remove user activity tracks including index.dat files and clean the hard disk.

Pros: Windows records track of activities done by a user at several places. These are easily readable by anyone who knows where to look. That could be quite a security risk. This application helps clean up this data. PCMesh Internet and Disk Cleanup is a utility to remove user activity tracks including index.dat, internet cache, cookies, internet history, etc. There are three index.dat files, cookies, history and cache. It also helps clean the disk of temporary and other junk files. Disk Cleanup clears Windows Temp directory, junk files, Recycle Bin and Recent Documents folder to ensure a problem-free Windows operation. It also includes file shredding functionality, whereby files deleted can not be recovered in any way. File shredding means overwriting files a few times before deletion for security purposes. The idea is to make it hard or impossible to recover the files with forensic software. You can use this feature to delete your sensitive files. However the deletion time will increase depending on your chosen number of overwrites. Some of the prominent tracks are in the index.dat file that logs user`s Internet activity such as the addresses of visited websites, a copy of those sites and received cookies.

Windows programs create their temporary files in the Temp folder. But sometimes they fail to delete them after use. An example would be those times when Windows stops responding and you have to push the Restart button on your PC. UserAssist is an area of Windows registry where some user activity is logged. Windows doesn`t provide any option of clearing this area other than manually editing the registry. Other areas where user activity tracks are left include files searched, documents opened, memory contents saved to page file/ swap file, etc. All of these tracks are cleared up with a single click.

Cons: One risk with all such complete wizard like applications is if it does something wrong there’s no way of protecting yourself from it. Make sure no problems exist before using all such programs.

Overall: Simple to use this application has functionality that are essential and works well. This is clearly a 4 star unit.