7 replies to this topic

[Tom AZ]

I just happen to use AVG Anti-Virus 7.5 and notice that there is a box for this program in the "Application" section of CC. When I check that box, I come up with about 7MBs of stuff to be "cleaned" (for AVG alone.) Typically, what is all of this -- are they log files are something else? Is it safe to get rid them, or do I need to exercise some caution?

[Andavari]

If you're using the winapp2.ini entry I submitted it cleans exactly this:

[*Grisoft AVG 7.5]
LangSecRef=3024
Detect=HKLM\SOFTWARE\Grisoft\Avg7
Default=True
FileKey1=%allusersprofile%\Application Data\Grisoft|*.AVG
FileKey2=%allusersprofile%\Application Data\Grisoft\Avg7Data|*.AVG
FileKey3=%allusersprofile%\Application Data\Grisoft\Avg7Data|*.log
FileKey4=%allusersprofile%\Application Data\Grisoft\Avg7Data\upd7bin|*.*
FileKey5=%allusersprofile%\Application Data\Grisoft\Avg7Data\$history|*.*
FileKey6=%allusersprofile%\Application Data\Grisoft\Avg7Data\avg7upd|*.log
FileKey7=%windir%\All Users\Application Data\Grisoft|*.AVG
FileKey8=%windir%\All Users\Application Data\Grisoft\Avg7Data|*.AVG
FileKey9=%windir%\All Users\Application Data\Grisoft\Avg7Data\upd7bin|*.*
FileKey10=%windir%\All Users\Application Data\Grisoft\Avg7Data\avg7upd|$history
FileKey11=%windir%\All Users\Application Data\Grisoft\Avg7Data\avg7upd|*.log
FileKey12=%windir%\All Users\Application Data\Grisoft\Avg7Data|*.log
FileKey13=%windir%\Application Data\AVG7\Log|*.log

Edit:
Files that are several MB in size could either be old already installed updates, or those pesky .AVG files. Although if you had those .AVG files they'd be rather huge and most likely bigger than the 7MB you've mentioned.

Edit 2:
Forgot to say, yes it's o.k. to clean up those files they won't harm AVG! Most of the entries were in usage since AVG 7.0, I only added the .AVG files because they can quickly gobble up 1 GB or more of hard disk space if not cleaned on a regular basis.

[Tom AZ]

Andavari, on Jun 22 2007, 05:39 AM, said:

If you're using the winapp2.ini entry I submitted it cleans exactly this:

Edit 2:
Forgot to say, yes it's o.k. to clean up those files they won't harm AVG! Most of the entries were in usage since AVG 7.0, I only added the .AVG files because they can quickly gobble up 1 GB or more of hard disk space if not cleaned on a regular basis.

I'm sure your entry is the entry I'm using . . . I didn't know you were the author. That's reassuring because you know exactly what it's cleaning. I know this is going to sound a bit retarded -- and I hope you didn't already make it clear and I just missed it -- but just what are these files in AVG that continue to accumulate?

[Andavari]

I'm not the original author of the AVG cleaning routine, I merely updated it from AVG v7.0 to support AVG v7.5.

The files you're seeing could be anything that's listed in the cleaning routine, from logs, old updates, etc., all of which are completely safe to remove.

[Tom AZ]

What is the value (if any) of keeping or removing log files -- not only in the AVG app, but any app? Is there ever a reason or a need to refer to them?

[Andavari]

Tom AZ, on Jun 22 2007, 02:54 PM, said:

Is there ever a reason or a need to refer to them?

Actually there's reasons to keep some logs as they can show (talking about any program in general not just anti-virus):
* Errors that occurred in the program.
* Files replaced after updating the program.

[Tom AZ]

Andavari, on Jun 22 2007, 10:33 PM, said:

Actually there's reasons to keep some logs as they can show (talking about any program in general not just anti-virus):
* Errors that occurred in the program.
* Files replaced after updating the program.

Are there any basic rules or guidelines for determining what to keep and what to "clean" -- and when? Even with the AVG stuff, is that anything I would ever need -- or is the need so rare and insignificant that it's not even worth thinking about it?

Another question would be in the "Windows Log Files" in the "Windows" -> "System" section of CCleaner -- keep them or dump them?

[Andavari]

Tom AZ, on Jun 22 2007, 05:42 PM, said:

Are there any basic rules or guidelines for determining what to keep and what to "clean" -- and when? Even with the AVG stuff, is that anything I would ever need -- or is the need so rare and insignificant that it's not even worth thinking about it?

Another question would be in the "Windows Log Files" in the "Windows" -> "System" section of CCleaner -- keep them or dump them?

Well I'm one of the folk that don't actually like to have anti-malware logs (anti-virus, anti-spyware, etc) deleted because in some instances that's the only way to find out what was removed and exactly where the file was located. This is especially important if a false positive detection occurred and caused a clean and valid file to be deleted -- it would be pretty damned hard or impossible to find out what was removed especially with all the files on any computer regardless of the OS version.

It's just a personal choice I suppose to either keep all the accumulated stuff like logs and old updates, or to remove them. I used to have a batch file that cleaned AVG Free version 6 some years ago before CCleaner was ever released, and I never had it touch the logs and only had it remove old updates.

For the past few days I'm between deciding if I want to remove or keep Avast Antivirus from winapp2.ini on my system because all it's doing is removing logs that could at some point be needed.

As for Windows logs those can hold numerous update related information such as C:\WINDOWS\WindowsUpdate.log but CCleaner can't clean that particular log file whilst Windows is running because it's locked, there's of course other logs that are created during updates. Other logs can hold crash data, etc., but those probably aren't much help to end-users, and probably best dealt with by PC technicians.