Exclude Recent fails

[Gabby Jim]

This has never worked. (XP-HOME Sp3 on a laptop with 2G RAM and 24 GB free on a 55 GB drive.) I had hoped that the latest upgrade (v2.31.1153) would solve the problem. No such luck.

 

Open CCleaner, select "Options", select "Exclude", Add "C:\Documents and Settings\[user name]\Recent\*.DOC, *.JPG; *.BMP; *.jpg; *.bmp; *doc" (or just C:\Documents and Settings\[user name]\Recent\*.*) and run the cleaner. Exclude didn't! (exclude, that is). All the shortuts are cleaned, leaving only "Desktop.ini"

 

This may be related to the fact that the folder is called "My Recent Documents" instead of simply "Recent" but CCleaner does not allow me to edit the entry that way - I have to use the "Browse" key, and THAT only discloses "Recent".

 

This is, like the vanishing "recent" in MS Word, a petty annoyance that I'd like to see corrected.

[Aethec]

Did you tick the "Custom Files and Folders" checkbox in the Advanced section of the cleaner ?

[Gabby Jim]

Thanks for the suggestion. However, the "Custom Files and Folders" checkbox does not - apparently - exist in V2.31.113. I do remember seeing it in earlier versions, but I cannot find it now.

 

Heading folks off at the pass though, I DID check "Save all settings to INI" - I've also explored all the options under Advanced, Tools, and Registry - all to no avail.

[Aethec]

Isn't it there ?

[Sailback]

I don't want to run you folks off the road here,

but as you say at the top, the files you'ld like to keep are link files

located in the recent files directory.

 

You obviously can see hidden files because you can

navigate to your recent files directory and see desktop.ini.

 

So here's the deal.

 

Windows has super hidden file extensions; .lnk is 1 of those.

As you know the recent files collection are just links to the real files.

(You intimate that understanding in the top post.)

 

On disk they have the ".lnk" file extension.

".lnk" is not visible because it is super hidden.

(The RECENT link could be called "importantinfo.doc.lnk")

 

The link files you want to preserve have the file extension .lnk.

 

Light bulb ... ?

Here are the excludes.. ccleaner is not at fault here and neither are you.

 

*.doc.lnk

*.jpg.lnk

*.bmp.lnk

 

Upper/lower case is not an issue.

 

So double check what I say.

You can do this yourself.

---------

open ccleaner -> navigate to the exclude screen.

open windows explorer -> navigate to the recent files directory

drag a file from the recent files directory in explorer into ccleaner's exclude box

click OK at the ccleaner prompt

-

NOW

Check the file extension in ccleaner's exclude dialog.

Hmm.. *.*.lnk be it should

 

manual edit the filename portion to be just an asterisk

and repeat the process for the other two file types.

--------

Peace.

[Gabby Jim]

Isn't it there ?

 

Thanks, Aethec - OH! THAT "Advanced" - Yes, it is THERE - but if you open "options" there is another "Advanced" and THAT is where you specify the Excludes - sorry about that, chief. - Now, I'm going to try the info offered by sailback.

[Augeas]

I believe that the Custom Files and Folders applies to Includes only. Excludes are excluded whether this box is ticked or not.

[ident]

but if you open "options" there is another "Advanced" and THAT is where you specify the Excludes -

 

Not being pedantic but Excludes is in options. There is no option to exclude any thing under options - advanced.

[Gabby Jim]

Not being pedantic but Excludes is in options. There is no option to exclude any thing under options - advanced.

I stand corrected - thanks

(I should have specified that OPTIONS is where you specify excludes - BAD Grammer! Bad Girl! Go to your room!)

[ident]

I stand corrected - thanks

 

Have you managed to resolve the issue?

[Gabby Jim]

I don't want to run you folks off the road here,

but as you say at the top, the files you'ld like to keep are link files

located in the recent files directory.

 

You obviously can see hidden files because you can

navigate to your recent files directory and see desktop.ini.

 

So here's the deal.

 

Windows has super hidden file extensions; .lnk is 1 of those.

As you know the recent files collection are just links to the real files.

(You intimate that understanding in the top post.)

 

On disk they have the ".lnk" file extension.

".lnk" is not visible because it is super hidden.

(The RECENT link could be called "importantinfo.doc.lnk")

 

The link files you want to preserve have the file extension .lnk.

 

Light bulb ... ?

Here are the excludes.. ccleaner is not at fault here and neither are you.

 

*.doc.lnk

*.jpg.lnk

*.bmp.lnk

 

Upper/lower case is not an issue.

 

So double check what I say.

You can do this yourself.

---------

open ccleaner -> navigate to the exclude screen.

open windows explorer -> navigate to the recent files directory

drag a file from the recent files directory in explorer into ccleaner's exclude box

click OK at the ccleaner prompt

-

NOW

Check the file extension in ccleaner's exclude dialog.

Hmm.. *.*.lnk be it should

 

manual edit the filename portion to be just an asterisk

and repeat the process for the other two file types.

--------

Peace.

 

Thanks - see my next

[Gabby Jim]

Have you managed to resolve the issue?

 

Not yet - see my next post

[Gabby Jim]

Thanks to all who have tried to help, but I'm still up a creek:

 

To recap -here's the current state of affairs:

First, I could not navigate to the "recent" folder via Ccleaner and see the desktop ini file. I checked that out the hard way - (my computer>c:>documents and settings>[user name]>recent).

 

Next: I tried appending .lnk to the excludes to no avail - didn't work

 

Next: I tried removing the check from Custom Files (leaving the *.lnk appended) - didn't work.

 

Next: I tried "Add" - navigate to the recent folder - and accept the default of all files in there (*.*) - didn't work

 

Next: I tried the drag and drop and manual edit as suggested - (one has to right click to select manual edit.) - didn't work

(note - tried with and without check in Advanced - Custom Files and Folders - no difference

 

Next: using drag and drop suggestion, pulled "My Recent Documents" into exclude and edited to restore the title - Didn't work.

 

Thanks again to all who tired. The quest goes on.

[Augeas]

I'm on XPHSP3. I don't usually have anuything in the Exclude section but...

 

I right clicked on Cleaner/Recent Documents, and selected Analyze. It showed three blah.blah.lnk files.

 

I went to Options/Exclude/Add, and clicked Browse on Drive or Folder, navigated to My Recent Documents, and pressed OK. I then clicked File Types at the bottom of the small pane, and entered *.lnk and clicked OK. I then went back to Cleaner, right clicked Recent Documents, and selected Anaylze. All three .lnk files were excluded from the analysis.

 

I then removed the Exclude entry and tested the same thing but with Add File instead of Drive or Folder. This did not exclude anything. So I suggest that you try method number one.

[Alan_B]

Simple solution :-

Navigate CC to something you can navigate to;

Save settings to INI;

Close CC;

Edit CCleaner.ini and alter your new entry to what you wanted in the first place.

 

My daughter and I have separate and private profiles.

Windows will show me her profile name, but everything else is "Access Denied"

I am therefore unable to use CC's navigation to stipulate files/folders within her profile

 

My solution worked for INCLUDE - I guess it will also work for EXCLUDE.

My solution allowed me to stipulate junk that I knew would lurk in her profile,

When I ran CC it still could not delete her junk under my authority,

but when she was logged in and ran CC her junk was gone.

 

Alan

[Gabby Jim]

I'm on XPHSP3. I don't usually have anuything in the Exclude section but...

 

I right clicked on Cleaner/Recent Documents, and selected Analyze. It showed three blah.blah.lnk files.

 

I went to Options/Exclude/Add, and clicked Browse on Drive or Folder, navigated to My Recent Documents, and pressed OK. I then clicked File Types at the bottom of the small pane, and entered *.lnk and clicked OK. I then went back to Cleaner, right clicked Recent Documents, and selected Anaylze. All three .lnk files were excluded from the analysis.

 

I then removed the Exclude entry and tested the same thing but with Add File instead of Drive or Folder. This did not exclude anything. So I suggest that you try method number one.

 

*sigh* - didn't work for me. Analyze doesn't show Recent when I have it in exclude, but none-the-less, recent is wiped out when I run the cleaner. See next, bleow for my next attempt.

[Gabby Jim]

Simple solution :-

Navigate CC to something you can navigate to;

Save settings to INI;

Close CC;

Edit CCleaner.ini and alter your new entry to what you wanted in the first place.

 

My daughter and I have separate and private profiles.

Windows will show me her profile name, but everything else is "Access Denied"

I am therefore unable to use CC's navigation to stipulate files/folders within her profile

 

My solution worked for INCLUDE - I guess it will also work for EXCLUDE.

My solution allowed me to stipulate junk that I knew would lurk in her profile,

When I ran CC it still could not delete her junk under my authority,

but when she was logged in and ran CC her junk was gone.

 

Alan

 

Thanks, Alan. I tried that,too. I even copied CCleaner.ini into the windows directory (where MOST programers put it) and it STILL didn't work.

 

My guess is that it has something to do with XPH-SP3 or perhaps my ancient CPU. Looks like I may just have to wait for the next upgrade and see if they can fix the problem.

 

Very strange that Recent doesn't come up on analze, but is still deleted.

[Augeas]

*sigh* - didn't work for me. Analyze doesn't show Recent when I have it in exclude, but none-the-less, recent is wiped out when I run the cleaner. See next, bleow for my next attempt.

Jeez, you're right. Although Analyse doesn't show the lnk files to be deleted, Clean just goes ahead and deletes them anyway.

 

Not only that, but it removes the whole blooming folder as well, with poor old Windows having to recreate it again.

[Gabby Jim]

Thanks again to all who have offered suggestions - I even tried closing CCleaner and checked to be sure the INI file was updated before I ran it again. This is all very strange. When I have Recent Excluded, it does not come up on Analyze, and if I have just run CCleaner and only modified the Exclude, the result says Zero files have been deleted. Yet the Recent folder is empty!

 

I don't have any problems with cookies I want to preserve, it's just "recent" files.

 

Right now this is getting way too time consuming. Looks like it will be simpler for me to simply turn off the "run ccleaner on startup" and only run it when I'm content that I won't want to use Recent for awhile - or have backed up the folder.

[Augeas]

Yes, you could waste hours on the various permutations. I did discover that when you have no Excludes at all and Recent Documents ticked the My Recent Documents folder is deleted in its entirety and recreated. I wonder if this has something to do with the problem of selective excludes? Compounded of course by the possible assumption that nobody would want to do a selective deletion on recent docs?

[Gabby Jim]

Yes, you could waste hours on the various permutations. I did discover that when you have no Excludes at all and Recent Documents ticked the My Recent Documents folder is deleted in its entirety and recreated. I wonder if this has something to do with the problem of selective excludes? Compounded of course by the possible assumption that nobody would want to do a selective deletion on recent docs?

 

Yes, I suppose that's the price we pay to have our computer files cleaned up - sometimes you just can't help throwing the baby out with the bath water - but at least mom, dad, and the older kids are clean.

 

I'd like to be able to preserve the MRU files in MS Office applications as well as not touch Recent at all - *sigh* maybe in some future upgrade.

 

Thanks againg for all your help.

[DennisD]

For what it's worth Jim, I've been trying to exclude files in that folder since yesterday with no success.

 

Trying a different tack, I even ended up with the folder renamed to "recent", but still with no success. The folder itself, as mentioned by Augeas, was deleted and then recreated by Windows, and eventually with its original name and icon.

 

Weird folder.

[Gabby Jim]

OK, everyone - 'nough. Beating a dead horse now. I'm going to change my watch cycle so I no longer get notified every day. Looks like the only hope is that the next upgrade will solve the problem. I'll either have to live with it as is, or stop running the program on startup and just run it when I'm not going to need the MRU files and Recent links.

[Willy2]

Gabby Jim,

 

There's a different reason why MS Word doesn't remember the recently opened documents. CC automatically detects that a number of applications are installed and then those applications (e.g. MS Office) show up in the ""Application"" pane in the main screen. Ticking a box there makes CC clean a number of folders and/or sections of the registry related to MS Word/MS Office only. And that's the reason why MS Word's ""Recent Documents"" is wiped as well.

 

I know the same happens with Real Player SP. When Real Player opens e.g. a *.mp3 file, it stores a shortcut in a special Real Player folder but a shortcut is placed in the general ""recent"" folder as well.

[Willy2]

With some digging in the registry I found out how the CC option ""Recent documents"" works.

 

Windows XP (Home SP 3) maintains and updates a number of lists in the registry:

1. All recently (i.e. the last 100 (???)) opened files.

2. An extra set of lists which contain recently opened files sorted by extension. For every extension (e.g. *.jpg, *.bmp, *.mp3) and for every recently opened folder as well, there's a separate list containing max. 8 (???) entries, each.

 

When the user has selected ""Recent Documents"" then those two lists in the registry are completely removed from the registry. But for me it's not quite clear how that affects the ""memory"" of program and/or Windows.

 

I would suggest you un-tick ""Recent documents"" but use ""Include"" and/or ""Exclude"" instead in combination with ticking the ""MS Office"" box in the ""Application"" pane. It's my experience that this combination works well.