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The dangers of using CCleaner


Tiffany

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Yup I'm with ePost on this one

 

This is a classic USR iZ @n 1d10t error and really he (and you :) dear reader) should follow the simple directions in my Signature. in fact, to his credit, he even admits the fault was in him

 

I’ve got myself into a lot of bother after an over zealous cleaning session

 

Overzealous

 

ADVICE FOR USING CCleaner'S REGISTRY INTEGRITY SECTION

DON'T JUST CLEAN EVERYTHING THAT'S CHECKED OFF.

Do your Registry Cleaning in small bits (at the very least Check-mark by Check-mark)

ALWAYS BACKUP THE ENTRY, YOU NEVER KNOW WHAT YOU'LL BREAK IF YOU DON'T.

Support at https://support.ccleaner.com/s/?language=en_US

Pro users file a PRIORITY SUPPORT via email support@ccleaner.com

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You did right in putting the link inhere, Tiffany. It's only fair to bring this to CCleaner's attention so that staff can take whatever steps they see fit.

 

Thank you.

 

It irritates me that this old and obsolete discussion about regcleaners continue. Microsoft themselves run an online regcleaner. A free online scanner called "Windows Live OneCare safety scanner". But people link to articles about regcleaners - articles that are 8 or 10 years old and say: see I told you!

 

The truth is that regcleaners are useful. Even Microsoft runs regcleaners. On other people's computers! Here have a go - full scan: http://onecare.live.com/site/en-us/default.htm?mkt=en-us

 

Note that there's a seperate link on the site for Windows Vista and Windows 7 users.

 

It's actually a 360 program they offer to run for us. For free. It defragments too.

 

When Microsoft find it necessary to clean Microsoft's keys out of Microsoft's registry in Microsoft OSes with a Microsoft made registry cleaner, then, frankly, I find the discussion totally absurd.

 

I cant believe that is so hard to get that message through. And yes, badly written programs can ruin everything. What else is new? :P

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Yup I'm with ePost on this one

 

This is a classic USR iZ @n 1d10t error and really he (and you :) dear reader) should follow the simple directions in my Signature. in fact, to his credit, he even admits the fault was in him.

 

I do not want this to be a personal attack on the person who wrote the post in question, I am sure he is a fine person with the best of intentions, but I am a bit confused about someone who works on what seems to be such a large site, but does not know, 1. how to replace a cd/dvd drive - even if it is a laptop or at least use an external drive 2. how to boot to the recovery partition if it exists and 3. seems to express dismay about connecting with an Ethernet cable. Perhaps this post was written with the intent of a target audience of novices, however, the rest of the site does not seem to be, and looks like it runs smoothly but, you will have to be the judge of the content of programs offered and reviewed. The user who wrote original article seems to need some "hands on" tech work before writing off CCleaner as the cause of his problems. You are right that in the comments he owned up to the possible causes but I think the article itself should be updated. I am betting that myself, and more than a few users here on this board, would have not had the issues that he did, and even if we did, we would have been able to restore that computer to a good working state. Also there is no mention that there could be some malware on that computer that caused the issues. I have seen MANY computers that had malware on them and after removing it, the software that was infected would break. The point is that perhaps the article should have been about backing up data and then doing advanced work, like working on the registry, the heart of the operating system in his case.

 

Nergal I am quoting you here so if your signature changes, this will stay. I agree and was watching another thread on the boards here that got long, a bit heated, and eventually locked. I think what CCleaner could/should do with the RegCleaner tool is either, separate it or put some sort of popup or background image warning to users who are not advanced enough to know what the registry is and does, and require a backup to be made during the cleaning, so they do not get themselves in trouble. Personally I use it, but I am a tech and if I had to, I could restore the deleted entry(s) on the affected machines. I have not looked to see if there is a sticky about using the registry tool, mostly I just stick to the "CCleaner bug reporting" threads, but I would probably be a good idea. There are lots of smart people here who could do it and explain in simple terms what a user is getting into when working with the registry and how easy it is to break things.

 

ADVICE FOR USING CCleaner'S REGISTRY INTEGRITY SECTION

Just because something comes up on the REGCleaner section DOES NOT mean that you SHOULD remove it.

Do your Registry Cleaning in small bits (at the very least Check-mark by Check-mark)

IF USING THE REGISTRY CLEANER ALWAYS BACKUP THE ENTRY YOU NEVER KNOW WHAT YOU'LL BREAK IF YOU DON'T, AND DON'T JUST CLEAN EVERYTHING THAT'S CHECKED OFF.

 

PS - love the old school haxor type. I'm so rusty, I actually had to think about it for a second, very funny.

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