mr don

I am very confused, Hazel. You said it re-introduces it. As though it did not in time past? As far as I can recollect, Java has long been a program that always installed the Java Updater. I always have to uncheck that after a Java install. I wonder how you went so long without discovering this? Perhaps some program interfered with the updater being installed or used such as a security program that blocks additions to the startup list? Teatimer? Etc? P.S. Aethec, although Java is something I would rather do without, sometimes semi-critical software requires it, such as Open Office. Yeah, I don't like Java either, but sometimes you have to have it for certain apps or programs to run, just like that .NET mess.

How can we help you? You just said it cleans more. What options do you have checkmarked in CCleaner? The items you set it to clean make a LOT of difference. What version of CCleaner do you use? Version is very important because certain features & cleaning locations may be included in the last few versions that did not exist prior to that. Did you check whether you also cleared System Restore points somehow? Check with CCleaner to see the # of restore points before & after you do a disk cleanup. Perhaps there is something CCleaner misses such as some dump file, but it would help to be able to know more first. Also, check to see if hibernation is turned on or off. Hibernation files can take several GB depending on your system RAM & setup. _________________________________________________________________________ If possible, try this & reply back: After using the PC a while, run CCleaner in Analyze mode & write down the GB it shows for cleanup. Be sure you have the Memory Dump files etc checkmarked in CCleaner first. Go to start/run & type cleanmgr /sageset:01 That should bring up cleanmgr with a few more options. If you have trouble running it from 7, try installing Classic Shell & then run it in that run box. _________________________________________________________________________ Verify & write down the free space before beginning, then: Test each option by checkmarking only the first item, then try only the second item checkmarked, etc. Verify the GB before & after each item you checkmarked. After completing all of these items, see what the final GB is & write it down. _________________________________________________________________________ Send a log of the amount of space cleaned by each item you checked, along with the total cleaned by this process & the total that CCleaner showed in Analyze mode. This will greatly help as it will help to determine which area is the most responsible for trash. Regards, Don

I am not sure what the response to this may be, but have you tried holding the F8 key on reboot to bring up the safe mode options? If you can get to safe mode, can you run System Restore to bring your PC to a prior working date? (Start/Run & copy & paste restore/rstrui into the box & hit enter.) Sometimes you can log into safe mode under Admin or Administrator. Sometimes, those are password protected as well. This may or may not work for you, depending on your setup & security settings, but I wanted to throw that out to try until someone can get with you on the problem. Regards, Don

If it is very important, there are a few options. If the file was NOT in the My Documents folder, then if you have system restore on your machine, you possibly can restore back to a date to retrieve it. If it is a file you can file on the web, you may be able to re-download it. Do not give up if Recuva cannot recover it. There are different data recovery programs, & some work where others fail. It is possible that one may be able to recover it that another may not be able to. Of course, it is also possible that your file is toast, but if you know whether you had 1 copy or multiple on different user profiles for instance... Hope this helps!

That is one thing I am not sure of. I know that it does not usually take much. But it can work faster with more space. If you are running low, turning off System Restore to free up several GB space by removing all the former system restore points. Immediately afterwards, re-enable so that it can create a system restore point as a safety in case something goes wrong. If you still do not have enough free space, try looking for toolbars/games/programs that you no longer need or use to uninstall. If you have a lot of music or family pictures, try transferring it to a flash drive & removing it from your harddisk. Hope this helps!

I agree that unused extensions is very safe if you know what you are doing. Very, very safe. Because you know what you are doing. ___________________________________________________ But there are 3 problems with this. ___________________________________________________ A - On systems with a ton of extensions suggested for removal, it will take nearly forever to check & see what should or shouldn't be removed. B - All it takes for .MP3 for example, to be suggested as safe to remove, is for you to install something like KM Player. Let it take default for MP3. Delete or uninstall KMP & your .MP3 is definitely needed, no doubt. But CCleaner thinks this is now safe to remove since nothing points to it any more. Certain malware samples can also cause CCleaner to erroneously believe that .EXE is safe to remove. C - Not every user is as tech savy as we are. Therefore, not everyone "knows what is safe to remove". Which makes it very dangerous for some people. ___________________________________________________ I would say that if the check for unused extensions is removed, that would make the Fix All Issues a lot safer to use. Because I have seen a lot of problems from that 1 key check alone. Oh no, it doesn't happen over night a lot of times, & sometimes the extensions to be removed are chain linked. That is to say, CCleaner removes one extension that another application had a dependency on. Then, because that dependency chain is broken, CCleaner also suggests yet another to remove. In this way (& usually over many consecutive runs), CCleaner can absolutely trash a machine. Sometimes just by removing an extension, CCleaner will then think that other entries related to that, or that used that extension may be safe to remove their settings. A lot of people don't catch these, so their system degrades over time & they don't know why. So all that head scratching, & they have to reinstall Windows. Wonderful. Now, I realize you never had problems, but you have to realize that with you only using MS Office, Nero, CCleaner, Firefox, etc, you may not have problems. Some people use/test many times more, or use a lot of "non standard" software in addition to the times someone tried to run a System Restore only to have an incomplete restore because it was corrupted, or to see those [] entries in the registry. Yes, it can happen! Hence, the problems! Hope this defines the issues so that you can more clearly see what I meant. Don

That is a lot, I agree. ___________________________________________________ I simply test because I want the best. I learned a lot over time & testing. ___________________________________________________ I do not intend to have 500,000 apps forever, but only till I test to see what I want to keep. Hopefully, I can trim it down to 5,000 or fewer over time. I test so many at a time because the faster I get done, the quicker I can have that deep down sense of accomplishment. ___________________________________________________ I do a lot with the apps, but it would take too much space to list all the things I know about it or do with them here.

Oh, I am well aware of that. The main culprit of CCleaner is the scan for Unused File Extensions. That will break your system faster than anything if you let it remove all the "safe to remove" extensions. But of course, I sent that part to the bug section. Hopefully, they will fix it soon!

Thanks for the help! Of course, I am aware of these things, it is just that I thought it is very dangerous to continue to allow this to be scanned for in CCleaner with it being the most dangerous key that CCleaner can scan for. Of interest & on the same note, if you install KM player, it can hijack the settings if you are not careful during install & take default. Not that I mind. It can play many formats WMP fails to play. But upon uninstall, the .MP3 extension is left with nothing associated, therefore it is "safe to remove"... Then, there is malware or other programs that can change a user's default settings for opening a .EXE file. What happens when they think that is safe to remove? The whole reason I want it removed is I just want CCleaner to be safe for the common people's. I agree with you on what you say though, very true. I also believe it will stop a lot of the whole "CCleaner messed up my system & I cannot get it working again!" arguments that I have seen people post in here. While it may not eliminate them totally, I do believe it will make CCleaner far safer & greatly reduce such incidents. P.S. I don't really think the settings are corrupted, however, but I do have 7Z, Winrar, Extract Now, + a couple other handlers on my system. All seem to be working fine with no problems at the moment.

Thanks Hazel! I realize that. ___________________________________________________ The photos posted are not meant to be advertisements for other programs. They are meant to show that: A - My suggestion to improve Registry Cleaner is possible B - That it would not undermine the safety of the cleaner if done correctly Although, they WERE all safe to remove. I went through the directories to ensure that what it said was no longer there really wasn't. In this case, it was right in all 298 cases, or 100% of the time. ___________________________________________________ I didn't want to raise the "uh, duh, ccleaner registry cleaner is safe, therefore it cannot be improved" argument. Perhaps a better question would be why CCleaner misses so many files that obviously are not there. I do not mean this in a bad way, because I do love CCleaner. I just know that it can safely be improved. Although someone here or there may have suggested something, I suggested a specific area (files that no longer exist) that I know to be safe to improve on. Thanks! mr don

I will address each point. _________________________________________________ I really am not understanding "if you install or use thousands of programs" bit. Where are all these exe's laying around installed? Program files? Surely not next to there own uninstaller? How can an application name be hard to remember? If you are on focus to it by being able to right click surely you can remember it's name? Ok, I downloaded thousands of apps. Maybe around 500,000 or so. All different kinds from screensaver makers, to screenshot recorders, to popup note makers, etc. They are in EXE, MSI, JAR & other formats. Some are installable, others run direct, others make entries in app data folder when run. There is a ton of things to test including what windows versions they run in. I collected so many over the years because I wanted to have the best. So each category of software such as video editors, video players, video converters, the list goes on & on & on, I downloaded sometimes hundreds of programs for each category to test. I mostly have what I want in freeware, so I usually delete any trials I find left on my drive. Anyway, they are on an external hard disk I have. Try remembering what an app is called when you just installed something like 5,000 applications in 1 weekend. _________________________________________________ If i had a ton of applications installed and could not remember it's name...How am i going to navigate to it to right click uninstall? This is exactly the point. If CCleaner had the right click/uninstall, I would not HAVE to search for the file. I could simply right click & remove it. Much faster if you have a lot of files on a system. For a computer like yours where you always only use things like Open Office, MS Office, CCleaner, Defraggler, Firefox, etc, etc, it is all too easy for a "lite" user like you. _________________________________________________ I can't see how it could say any time. If i did not need an application any more it takes 2 seconds to start the uninstaller process.... I do. Some applications have MSI installers that get hung & refuse to remove. Deleting them does no good because they are regenerated in the Add/Remove list because of being an MSI file. I don't have time like you to just install a program, then test it, then remove it. I have to install in bulk, then remove in bulk. This would save me a ton of time to just be able to right click remove it. If I had to uninstall 5,000 applications, is it easier to open CCleaner (1 click), Navigate to the tools tab (2 clicks), right click a file to uninstall it (3 clicks) (5,000 programs to uninstall multiplied times 3 clicks each is 15,000 clicks. For more fun, this is also 15,000 clicks multiplied times 2 seconds each which is 30,000 seconds, or 500 hours). Or is it easier to just right click a program & uninstall it (1 click)? 5,000 clicks multiplied times 2 seconds = 10,000 seconds, or 166.67 hours. 500 hours minus 166.67 hours = 333.33 hours I just saved. (That's 13.8 days, or nearly 2 weeks!) You do the math, but I can easily see from this example that I saved 10,000 clicks using the right click method + 20,000 seconds (333.33 hours, or 2 weeks). I can see why a user like you won't benefit, because you can remember all your programs. You don't use more than 30 or so programs, do you? I am not going to do this permanently, I just have to sort through all my stuff. My goal is to have the best in each category when I am done. _________________________________________________ Of course, you might not think 2 weeks is a lot of time to save... Pffff, pffft! Well, I gotta get back to work!

Maybe... I sometimes forget to check the date of someone's post. Idea... If the forum can automatically change the color somehow of posts that are over 2 weeks old with no replies, for example, then this would provide a very good visual alert. Or alert a user when they click the Reply button "Hey, this post has not been responded to in over 2 weeks. Are you sure you want to proceed"? Just an idea... May help stop a lot of "mistakes" up here.

Sounds good to me, except your leaving out the portable users here. You may be worried that CCleaner would then make many backups from many machines so that the wrong reg-key is imported. I have the solution to this. __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Build CCleaner to automatically backup registry keys with the machine name + time & date stamp. By machine name, I don't mean the right-click/my computer name, I mean the name that shows in DXDIAG utility, & includes: HP Compaq dc7600 convertible minitower. That is just an example, but CCleaner could be made to refuse any import that did not exactly match the machine name given to the registry key when backed up. Example: CCleaner backs up the registry with HP_Compaq_dc7600_convertible-mini - 1:31am - Oct 18 2010 User tried to import a key stating that it was: Acer_Inspire_fg100 - 2:54pm - Oct 18 2010. CCleaner sees that this doesn't match the HP machine key & refuses to import. This would mean that CCleaner would have to have a registry import key built in (safe import) where it could show users green for keys that matched the machine model & red for keys that cannot be installed. The option to delete keys from here would be nice as well. CCleaner would have to have an option to set the default folder to check for registry keys, such as it's own folder when run portably. __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ This would block a lot of users from damaging their machines by using the wrong keys for the wrong machines. The beauty of this is that it would work whether CCleaner was run portably or they used it on an installed machine. * I do realize it would be possible to edit or change the name, so I thought of an alternative if this sounds better. CCleaner could write the machine name inside the registry key upon save. If they user used safe import, CCleaner would automatically import the key minus the machine name stamp. This would allow them to name the key whatever they wanted. I think I actually like this idea better. Users could still import keys manually, & the extra date stamp wouldn't hurt anything, but they should be using CCleaner to verify the registry keys match the machine they were created on... Shouldn't they?

Major headache here, lol! 1) Microsoft Finally Saw the error of their ways, no other OS stores leaves program folders Writable by The User (they at least require some form of SuperUserDO (i.e. UAC))--> http://www.betanews.com/article/Sophos-study-suggests-Windows-7-UACs-default-setting-is-selfdefeating/1257455306 It seems this is all too easy to defeat. I also read about a 2 stage malware attack where they would set themselves up as part of a shortcut to a program so that when a user clicks the program & grants it permission, the malware is run as part of this & gets the same elevation --> http://www.zdnet.com/blog/security/defeating-uac-with-a-two-stage-malware-attack/203 2) To allow to write in that folder lets the computer be compromised. --> Malware primarily installs to Program Files folder, App Data, System32. It can install to Windows, but System32 is a verrrrry common place. Just wondered. How does this secure Windows by blocking only 1 possible location? 3) I don't use a multiuser system but my OS makes me sign in (Whether it is Windows Linux or MAC a user is signing in (even if autosignin). Else we're using Windows98/millennium which allowed users to Cancel the login and still use the PC and was VERY insecure. --> My understanding is that while 98/ME both let you hit ESC to login, they will block certain Admin only activities until you do login. The main security of XP SP2 & higher seems to be the integrated firewall.

I wanted to ad that I don't even go so far as to always trust a harddisk image. For permanent copies, I always use ISO container files, because they always 100% of the time burn back with any program that supports ISO burning, exactly as they were. Great for bootable CD/DVD media. Rest of post edited out by moderator. Please keep on topic, and shorten your posts as you have been repeatedly asked to do.

CCleaner scans for Unused File Extensions in the registry cleaner. But when I tested it, it came up with .7z as a good extension to remove. The only problem with that is, that I still had it installed & still used it! Please fix this, because this causes people more problems than any other part of the Registry Cleaner. I think this is very dangerous & should be removed. It has also suggested at other times depending on what was installed/uninstalled, that .Mp3, or even .EXE were safe to remove. Imagine what that does to people to cripple their ability to run .EXE programs? If you don't know what your doing, it is a real devil to fix! Look at the pictures to see what I mean.

I love CCleaner, but I ran a side by side test to try to fix a problem that I was having. Sadly, CCleaner found 3 registry entries as safe to remove. Another found 298. See the pics to see what I mean. All the additional entries are 100% safe to remove & caused no problems to remove. In looking at the pic, many were still being referenced in the registry after being run from a temp dir long ago, or other files simply no longer existed... My suggestion is to improve the part that scans for files that no longer exist, please. Look at the pictures & the file paths... Thanks!

I am going to go out on a limb here, but I believe that you think this is pointless because why not just open CCleaner to uninstall applications? I may be wrong (correct me if I am) but I believe he was thinking more along the lines of being able to simply right click an installed application & remove it using a context menu option that CCleaner could be coded to add. I can see the merits of such a system myself, because if you install or use thousands of programs, it would kinda be handy to be able to right click & uninstall applications. Because sometimes an application name is hard to remember... Because sometimes you have a ton of installed applications & cannot think of what to search for to remove... Because right click/uninstall could save a lot of time... I see his point in a way. I think it makes sense when you think of it like this, so I am going to give the idea + 1 from me.

This is very debatable. Application Data is fine for multi-user systems & can help separate your data from someone else's. Application Data folder is also rarely cleaned by most people, so if all programs resort to that, there will end up systems with tons (GB? TB?) of data in future systems ranging from personal game settings, to professional recording applications etc. I could be wrong, but I believe that Google Chrome is an example of a program that installs all of the web browser to its entirety to the user application data folder, skipping C:\Windows\Program Files altogether. I cannot imagine if even more programs with even more MB to install start doing this method! I have not had time to test the newer versions of it yet to see if they changed... I imagine they haven't though. It would be nice to be offered a choice. If the registry cleaning is allowed storage in the same folder as CCleaner in a folder called Registry Backups, that would be great for portable use. I'd hate to try to attempt to find all the different possible registry entries backed up under 5 user accounts like some people do, or even worse, having 10 or more user accounts to try to recover the registry files from! How can it be so many? Easy! Some users try to "repair" a dead windows installation by popping in a windows install disk. They install over the old set, which can result in deactivated profiles while Windows creates new ones... I see the benefits of your suggestion, but also the demerits of such a system. I vote for user choice on this one, with CCleaner saving the relative path in the INI settings file so it can be run portably from a flash drive if need be. Regards, Don

I do understand. Thanks for the answers. You are all awesome. Sorry for the trip-up. I use CCleaner myself & am very familiar with the features. I have tested a few programs in time past, but I got deep into data recovery techniques + whether a file could be undeleted after a secure wipe, etc. with certain programs... I do believe that what trips a lot of people up is leaving data in plain site that they thought they erased, or using a quick erase vs secure. I will be testing for sure more on this later. I have a few decent data recovery programs, so it will be interesting. I merely asked earlier like I did, because Evidence Eliminator seems to claim that it is the only one of it's kind that can really/truly destroy data beyond recovery... I was just wondering if that is true or a bunch of FUD. The tools I use may be different from Law Enforcement, so I was hoping for input concerning real field testing & use. It was not meant in such a manner to really bug anyone, but I merely wanted to know more about how good it is in the real world criminal investigations scenes. I will be checking a few stories online + doing my own research later just to test (& partly just for fun, because I like to see if things can be defeated or if they truly work in a manner making it impossible). I know that I have accomplished in other areas, things that some people would have said is impossible but there are so many different areas to work on that it is difficult to be an expert in them all. A lot of people around here do standard computer stuffs, but many times I find myself digging to a deeper level than most because I have a fascination for the "impossible" things. I like to learn to a greater degree, become extremely knowledgeable, & if possible, even more so than even the Law. I have simply heard too many cases of the Law being abused, so I very nearly worship knowledge because of the power it brings. I appreciate everyone's response. Most future responses should be far shorter, but my concern was the privacy vs snoops issue. I am once again very sorry if I caused anguish with length, but I confess that I crave knowing things inside & out, more intimately than most. It is just one of those things with me. Thanks everyone, & I really have to go to bed. I am sleepy! Peace! Edit: I also asked about it, because contrary to what many "Experts" here may claim that magnetic underwriting is impossible, or that it is impossible to defeat forensics with something like CCleaner, ---> http://www.youtube.com/comment_servlet?all_comments=1&v=xYgcCfrYA7k has many replies. These are from users worldwide, so I would think that such a wide range of users (hopefully) would know. One of the users mentioned CCleaner, but they said CCleaner did secure wipes but just not as good as Evidence Eliminator did. I am not here to promote EE in any way, I just wondered if CC could be "brought up to par" on data destruction. Now, it is possible they used an older version prior to the wipe free space & file slack etc, so I am not 100% sure yet. More testing to do later... Sigh!!!! Will try to update the results later when I have time to actually do this, which may take a while because I am also in the process of moving. So please forgive me if it takes a long time to update this with results. I have noted that my responses were a bit lengthy, but only because I have a fascination with data & whether it can truly be destroyed. P.S. EE seemed to work on the last test I did, but more testing to follow. I will probably wait till CC 3.0 or so & test CC along with some other apps to see how they stack. Thanks for your time & understanding. Night!

There are too many unknowns here... - Windows version + Service Pack #? - Single Hard Drive or Raid? Or are they Trim SSD Drives that the Trim command wasn't used, or Non-Trim SSD Drives? - Did you have System Restore enabled? - Did you run quick erase, or secure? If secure, # of passes? - Did you set CCleaner to secure wipe the free space? And if you did set it to, did you then enable it? You have to set it to AND enable it in CCleaner... - Did you enable the right options in CCleaner? IE, auto complete entries, etc, erase "everything"? - Perhaps they were able to use the registry to check for certain things. Did you note if you have programs that use the registry to store data? - Version of CCleaner used? IE, 1.41? 2.08? What version? - Do you use any drive state programs such as Microsoft Steady State, or alternate "system protection" programs similar to Sys Restore in functionality? - Do you use any folder locker/encryption programs that you tried to "hide" files in? - Did you try to wipe the C: drive, or all the drive(s) involved? What drive(s) were the data on? - Harddrives can mark sectors bad that start failing to produce good read or write patterns. Law enforcement may be able to still read from these areas if they are not completely "dead". CCleaner will NOT erase secret stashes of files that you hid somewhere on the drive because it cannot tell what is what. It only knows the areas that Internet trash accumulates & regular standard areas that may cause problems. Arrrr! This is a headache! Could you please provide more information? It is so hard to try to understand what could have went wrong with just a simple "CCleaner did not work!" I just want to know if it was CCleaner or if it was some other overlooked problem. Help us help you, man, provide us more information, please! Regards, Don

Recuva is a great program. It is really simple to use. _____________________________________________________________________________ Can you add RAW mode support? Reason: If a drive crashes during file copy/move operations, it can corrupt a partition. The drive will fail to post a drive letter, or if it does, appears as RAW instead of NTFS or FAT32. Currently, Recuva can't even see such a drive, but it would be nice to support recovering from: RAW/Corrupted/Damaged/Deleted partitions & be able to restore a good copy of the NTFS partition if the drive uses NTFS. I know this is possible because I have another tool that does exactly that. But I'd rather simply use Recuva, if this feature can be added. _____________________________________________________________________________ Regards, Don

Don't worry. CCleaner can only clean System Restore points. Not turn them on or off. You have nothing to worry about Hazel. Of course, my understanding is that if System Restore point creation is implemented, that it will be an opt-in per-user basis. You bring up a good point, but I believe that won't be an issue, because I am sure they will have it opt-in or something. As to the auto backup for the prior poster, I believe it could be a good idea. I also believe CCleaner should perhaps continue the same way it does now, but with an opt-in option, where a user can select auto backups if they wish. This may be better than an opt-out. The settings can be saved in the settings.ini of course, & the user needs to be able to select a default folder for backup. Perhaps a few choices such as My Documents, CCleaner application directory, or custom? Regards, Don Edit: The File Association scan under CCleaner Registry scan seems to be the most dangerous part of the registry scan, so hopefully they will remove that scan in future versions... That is where the most problems with the registry cleaner seem to come from in my testing.

How fast do you need CCleaner? It loads in mere seconds on my machine. You don't have malware slowing your system, or low amounts of RAM perhaps?