PC cleanup question
 

I have been using Piriform's crap cleaner or CC cleaner for almost 20 years now and it has helped me through a lot of drama. But in the past I have used another 2 or 3 programs that have been more powerful than CC, especially in virus cleanup situations. Remember XP? yes. My problem here today I am asking for help on is that I have lost the names of those other programs. I did not write them down on paper like I should have but are all over my desktop PC that suddenly does not start up. There was a forum long ago that helped with these issues and recommended these programs to me that really helped, but of course they're not on the net anymore after the introduction on Win 10. Would anyone know the names of some powerful cleaning utility programs that they have previously used? I'll keep my eye on this thread thank you.

I'll need to do a little more research, but a quick search of my Win XP I found the following:
Spybot - Search & Destroy
Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware

I think there was one I uninstalled because it clashed with another one, gave a message it could not run whilst the other was installed. Some kind of anti-competition code I was guessing.

There might have also been another I uninstalled after it finished doing its job.

I cannot do the research at the moment, I have a full day but will do it this evening.

Edit: A quick search and I found I mentioned having tried these:
Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware, Spybot, SpywareBlaster, Ad-Aware, SuperAntiSpyware, Malicious Software Removal Tool

Many thanks LOTR, I will start investigating these.

There's some extra tools here:
https://www.gnutellaforums.com/chat-...tml#post376726

You might need to go to the home site of one or more of these in order to find an older XP compatible version. Some such software businesses do hold onto and offer older versions for older systems.

Whilst I also found this one https://www.gnutellaforums.com/open-...tml#post358313 which looks very good (apparently works during trial period), two years ago they removed support for any system below Win 10.

Great! thanks. Right here on the forum A! Allright! Yes I do remember the Junkware removal tool from back then. I will that a try first.
This is not for my XP but the 2 Win7 laptops I have. I do not have any viruses I don't believe but very slow running systems. My CPU meters are averaging 55 and 70. When the newer operated at 35 just up until recently with 2 browsers running, 17 without. This just happened last week when I loaded software I did not need, but then erased everything out thoroughly (I thought) Now there is no trace of any new installations so it says???

My first thoughts are to 1. Check for browser plug-ins.
2. Also check which apps are active, see if there's any you do not recognise.
3. Check which apps are utilising the internet. I'm not certain how to do that on Windows.

I am aware some security apps, particularly some brands of AV can be incredibly CPU demanding. There might be an issue with an AV settings needing to be curbed from analysing every single activity but only for new items. That kind of thing.