No, those utilities actually do work. Don't pay them money by any means, the free version works just fine (I actually paid for them b/c I wanted to know whether to recommend to customers to buy them or not... the difference between free and paid was a matter of convenience in scheduling auto-tasks instead of hitting 'clean' once a week, with a few more thorough cleanup options).
Nuke, you would never know if it worked, as you don't let your system get that far.. rather than maintain, you nuke & pave (or ghost-restore, same difference as we both know)... try it sometime. Get someone's computer that they haven't maintained in five years but have used regularly, and the kids have put all sorts of toolbars and messenger services on it. Now, this only works as long as it's got a GB or more of RAM and XP (2GB for Vista / 7 but Vista will be slow anyways, just not
as slow) - you will see a boost with 512MB as well, however, the system is figuratively chewing its arm off for more memory at that point so it's not really pretty (workable, but not pretty).
Take said computer, make sure there's no viruses.. do an offline scan wish a bootable, updatable AV CD (BitDefender, AVG, Kaspersky, etc).
Install & update MSE (it's the lightest and I always use it) and do a full scan.
Install & update Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware and do a full scan.
Now, do benchmarks. Time the startup, fire up a few web pages (I'd install Chrome or Firefox, whichever, and use those to benchmark, IE is pretty ****ty except IE9 and I don't trust M$ so..), start up a few commonly used programs that they have, time them.
Install all Windows Updates that you are going to install.
Then, get CCleaner, run it through, scan the registry, fix the errors (yes i know i know registry cleaner zomgwtfbbq).
Then, get Advanced SystemCare Free from iobit, do a thorough scan, select scan&repair. Go to Settings at top right (maybe located under 'More'), and disable ASC Free's starting on system boot.
Then, get Smart Defrag from iobit, select system volume, go to Boot Time Defrag tab, select all the boxes.. then go to Settings at the top, (don't disable starting Smart Defrag on startup; it will keep your hard disk from getting too fragged while system is idle) go to Schedule under Defrag on the left side, enable the schedule for your system drive, set mode to full optimize. Then from main screen select your system drive and use the drop down menu to do a full optimization defrag. Reboot after it's done; if Smart Defrag wants to do a boot time defrag to optimize your system files (13 of them for XP IIRC), let it do it.
Now, do benchmarks again. I guarantee you will see significantly better results. Bonus - if you run the tools once a week (except Smart Defrag, that's automatic) then your system will
stay that way for years. You can set CCleaner and ASC Free to not wipe your Cookies, History, and Session data if you like keeping those for convenience (you can always select them to be cleared once in a while like every other month or so).
I know probably a lot of you think I'm crazy for advocating this. Problem is, I've seen the results. Every. Single. Time. (Unless the system was corrupted beyond repair by a really nasty virus, that did happen once out of every 15 or so cases I got). I don't mind if you don't want to do things this way. And I'd actually love to hear what your methods are for cleaning / maintaining WinDOwS systems; I enjoy learning and sharing. I know Nuke's methodology, and I know it would work nicely if that was how you prefer to run your system. What's you guys' methods behind your 'madness'? This is mine.

(I'm not loyal to the brands, either; I've switched them several times and will do so again as programs change and new programs appear or I learn of them.)
EDIT: I forgot to say, clean out the toolbars and tell the messenger programs not to run at startup, as well.
Also, Klaustrophobia, what do you mean it doesn't work?
Nuke - I forgot to put a

on my description of your method, but I'm not knocking it by any means, just so you know.
