Jeffp
I have no experience of a speed-up because I clean frequently.
I would not be surprised by an improvement if I allowed a lot of junk to accumulate before cleaning.
The above is in agreement with your findings, BUT - it does NOT work for other profiles.
Because I often clean, my profile holds little junk, and the entire operating system has little junk.
Other users rarely clean their profiles, but they still have the benefit of a junk free operating system.
On the rare occasions that they do clean their profiles the ONLY effects on my profile are :-
Properties of C:\ show a slight reduction in "Used Space" and corresponding increase in "Free space";
I have never noticed any effect upon speed.
It is totally unreasonable for any profile to have its speed affected by hidden, private, inaccessible junk in other profiles.
Unfortunately Windows has never been a reasonable animal,
with many "gotchas" for the unwary,
and NTFS gives it a smokescreen that makes things worse,
therefore I am open to information upon the unexpected.
Have you ever :-
chosen a profile as "master";
measured the speed (1) for this master profile;
cleaned this profile (plus operating system etc. etc.);
and again measured the speed (2) for this master profile;
and then gone to each of the other profiles and cleaned them;
and then returned to the original "master" profile and measured the speed (3);
And then compared speed(2) with (speed(3) ?
I would not expect cleaning to make speed(2) slower than speed(1),
and would hope it would make it faster.
I have no favourable expectations because Windows so often dashes them on the harsh rocks of reality.
I just accept that what happens is what happens.
QUESTION - have you ever measured speed(3) as faster than speed(2) ?
I would not expect any difference, but welcome advice.
ANSWER to your question :-
I use the portable build of CCleaner so its settings are not affected by the registry.
An "All Users" short-cut on the desktop can run this in a clean and shut-down mode,
and it will clean with a very safe non-aggressive CCleaner.INI :-
all the profile junk that user has created;
none of the system outside their profile.
So long as they use this for "Shutdown" instead of the usual Windows Shutdown,
then everyone, especially me, will have the benefit of extra free space.
A separate folder with another instance of CCleaner has a far more aggressive CCleaner.INI.
I personally use this to supervise the purging of all junk in my profile AND ALSO the whole system outside profiles.
Sometime soon after dealing with other priorities I expect to :-
use just one folder, not two (my first P.C. had a 20 MB HDD, so duplication of even 1 MB is offensive to me);
alter the desk top short-cut to invoke a batch CMD script.
This script will test whether "Alan" has launched it, or some-one else.
It will then replace CCleaner.INI with a renamed copy of Aggresive.ini for my use,
or Mild.ini for the others.
If you would like to try this and report back, it would be very helpful.
Otherwise when I have the time I will create, debug, and publish a workable batch file.
To summarise, without any need for you to log into the other users profiles;
you could simply install a CCleaner setup that does the shut-down for every user,
and you can choose how mild or aggressive,
and whether you want every-one to clean the whole system or only their own profile.
If the family has an "Administrator" with higher interest/skills with the computer,
you could additionally arrange a greater degree of aggression for that user,
and perhaps remove "system" cleaning from the general users settings.
That would quickly give a better speed for the profile you log in to,
and all the other profiles will get better speed,
and release more free space to every-one as each logins in and shuts-down.
You do not have to be there for it to happen.
Incidentally in addition to Mild.INI and Aggressive.INI,
you might use Psychotic.INI to give a thorough spring-clean under your supervision,
since you have the tools and skills to prevent/repair any damage.
Regards
Alan