CrashWhyCompare
CCleaner alternative — when the real question is “why does my PC crash?”
CCleaner, Advanced SystemCare, Glary Utilities and Wise Care 365 are PC cleaners: they remove junk files, clean the registry and manage startup programs. CrashWhy does a different job — it tells you why Windows crashed, shut off or restarted. It does not clean anything.
Short answer
If you want disk space back or a tidier startup list, a cleaner is the right kind of tool and CrashWhy is not a replacement. If you are looking at cleaners because the PC keeps crashing or restarting, read what Windows recorded first. Several of these cleaners say on their pages that registry cleaning or driver updates can reduce crashes; none of their official feature lists includes reading a crash and naming its cause. That is the only thing CrashWhy is built for.
Side by side
| CCleaner | Advanced SystemCare | Glary Utilities | Wise Care 365 | CrashWhy | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Website | ccleaner.com | iobit.com | glarysoft.com | wisecleaner.com | crashwhy.pages.dev (by oddlab) |
| Paid plan (official page, checked 2026-10-17) | Free; Pro and Pro Plus paid plans — the price shown depends on your region | Free; Pro $29.99 a year for 1 PC (list price; a sale price was shown) | Free; Pro $39.95 a year for 3 PCs | Free; Pro $39.95 a year for 3 PCs (list price; a sale price was shown) | Free; Pro $19 one-time for 3 PCs |
| Removes junk files | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No |
| Registry cleaner | Yes | Yes (Pro) | Yes | Yes | No |
| Startup programs | Not checked | Startup speed-up | Manage | Manage, block changes (Pro) | List, flag new and unsigned ones; remove with backup (Pro) |
| Explains a blue screen | Not in the feature list | Not in the feature list | Not in the feature list | Not in the feature list | Yes — stop code, likely cause, next step |
| Explains a shutdown with no blue screen (Event 41) | Not in the feature list | Not in the feature list | Not in the feature list | Not in the feature list | Yes |
| Says who restarted the PC (Event 1074, Windows Update) | Not in the feature list | Not in the feature list | Not in the feature list | Not in the feature list | Yes |
| Runs in the background | Real-time monitoring (paid) | Yes | Automatic care (Pro) | Real-time protection (Pro) | Yes (tray app) |
Facts from the official pages, checked 2026-10-17: ccleaner.com/ccleaner/plans, ccleaner.com/ccleaner/driver-updater, iobit.com/en/advancedsystemcarepro.php, glarysoft.com/glary-utilities-pro, wisecleaner.com/wise-care-365.html. “Not in the feature list” means we did not find it on the official feature pages — not that it is impossible. Prices change and sales come and go. Product names belong to their owners; CrashWhy is not affiliated with any of them. If something here is out of date, tell us and we will correct it.
What CrashWhy found on a real PC
The cleaners above don't list crash reading, so we compared CrashWhy with the tools that do. Same PC, same logs:
| What Windows logged | CrashWhy 0.5.2 | BlueScreenView 1.55 | Reliability Monitor (built into Windows) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2 blue screens (0xA, 0x139) | 2 of 2 — code, name, where Windows stopped, likely cause and next step. No administrator rights needed. | 2 of 2 — code, parameters, driver on the stack (ntoskrnl.exe). Asks for administrator rights. | 2 of 2 — listed with the stop code, no explanation |
| 3 shutdowns with no blue screen (Event 41) | 3 of 3 — explained as power loss or hard reset, with a running count | 0 of 3 — no dump file is written, so nothing to list | 3 of 3 — listed as “unexpected shutdown”, no cause |
| Windows Update restarted the PC (3 restart records) | Found — “Windows Update restarted it, nothing is broken” | Not covered | Lists installed updates; the restart itself is not shown |
| Freezes Windows recorded without crashing (live kernel dumps, last 30 days) | Found and explained — 5 graphics-driver freezes, 1 kernel lock timeout | Not listed — reads the blue screen dump folder only | Not in the records we read |
WhoCrashed was not run: its free Home edition is licensed for home use only and our test PC is used for business. Facts about it come from its official page. Reliability Monitor results were read from the same records it shows (Win32_ReliabilityRecords). Your results depend on what your Windows has kept.
When to use which
- Use a cleaner to free disk space, remove leftovers or tidy startup programs. CrashWhy won't do any of that.
- Use CrashWhy when the PC crashes, shuts off or restarts and you want to know why before changing anything. It only reads; it never deletes files or registry keys.
- They don't overlap, so you can use both.