Zero Nova

Honestly, I tried that repeatedly, but the ghosting issue just refused to stop until I tried the command prompt method. Sorry if I'm being a bit confusing here, but I just discovered something: CCleaner still fails to clear the browsing history under a standard (non-admin) account, and I have no idea why. It fails for both IE8 and Firefox. Believe me, I've tried running CCleaner with EVERYTHING in both the windows and applications tabs checked, and running it with admin privileges under the standard account. Even after a reboot, the browsing history is still there. More of a minor annoyance than an issue but I'd at least like to know why it's happening. I hope the developers are watching threads like this.

Yes. No, I checked pretty thoroughly. Even though the physical cookies were gone, their entries stayed in the "cookies to delete" section. That was definitely the case. I ran a search in Windows for "index.dat" and noticed 1 or 2 rather large (300KB or so) index.dat files were hanging around. For whatever reason, even CCleaner couldn't get rid of them. I'm guessing they were locked by the OS. I'll explain how I solved this below. ***To anyone who reads this, here is your one and only warning: For safety's sake, I would advise against performing what is described below. Don't blame me if you blow something up.*** To delete the locked index.dat files, I: Restarted the system Booted into Safe Mode With Command Prompt This gives you a command prompt with administrative privileges and prevents Windows from interfering with whatever operations you perform. Entered "cd\" Moves you to the root directory of your main drive (usually C:\) Entered "del index.dat /s" Tells DOS "delete all files named index.dat in all subdirectories". Boom. No more problems. The cookies no longer show up in the "cookies to delete" section. It's not a "proper" delete, but it works for me.

Scratch that quoted bit. For some reason, no matter when or how I run CCleaner, even with all possible cleaning options checked (except "wipe free space"), several cookies (which are always the same) remain in the "cookies to delete" column in options/cookies. Is this a glitch? They even stay there after I clear everything from my browsers the conventional way.

Thanks for your reply. I sometimes run CCleaner in safe mode because when CCleaner has a lot of items to clean, it seems to finish the job faster than it would without safe mode. That could be my imagination. I performed a fresh install of CCleaner and tried running it again without safe mode, and it seemed to have no problems at all that time. In any case, whether it was causing problems or not, I have decided to disable UAC completely. I can't find a use for it and my system has never been overtaken by malware anyway.

Info: I'm running Windows Vista Home Premium 32-bit, Service Pack 2 (safe mode). CCleaner reports that I am using the latest version. CCleaner.exe is set to run as Administrator for all users under the properties/compatibility tab. With all options under the "Windows" and "Applications" tabs checked, except the "Wipe Free Space" option, CCleaner fails to clear the browsing history, cookies, etc... for both IE 8 and Firefox 3.6.8. It also appeared in one instance that custom files and folders weren't cleared. It makes no difference whether I: Enable secure file deletion Run CCleaner under the Admin account Enter the Administrator password (UAC prompt) when running CCleaner under a standard account Right-click the desktop shortcut and select "Run as Administrator" This is strange; CCleaner seemed to work fine before I updated to the latest version. Could this be because I'm running CCleaner in safe mode? Should I try uninstalling and reinstalling CCleaner?