Kingsoft PC Doctor offers a suite of tools to optimise, clean and secure your PC.

Click the Optimizer button, for instance, and you'll find modules to help you take control of your startup programs and Windows services. Unlike many similar tools, PC Doctor doesn't simply list what's installed on your PC: it also offers recommendations on which programs and services can be safely deleted.

The hard drive cleaning options are similarly thorough. PC Doctor doesn't just delete your temporary folders and web browser cache; it also highlights a great deal of Windows junk (more than CCleaner, on our test PC). The Trace Cleaner module wipes away your activity histories in Windows and many applications; the OS Thinner lists Windows files which can safely be removed (sample music, pictures, videos and more); and the Large Files tab lists the 100 largest files on your system drive, for a quick look at where your drive space has gone.

And there are plenty of useful extras. The Traffic Monitor displays a graphical view of your open internet connections, for instance, while a tiny activity monitor shows your current internet upload and download speeds, CPU and RAM-hogging applications, and more.

It's not all good news, though, particularly on the security side. The program aims to detect Trojans and dangerous plugins, for instance, but just displayed a long list of false positives on our test PC. Users can tell Kingsoft about this, and so we'd expect its accuracy to improve over time, but at the moment the anti-malware section of the program is too unreliable to be of any use.