Winding, Webding, fonts gone, unreadable characters

[Mannaman]

The Topic Title and Topic Description are to help those poor unfortunate folks who think they have a virus that's screwing up their computer and are looking for an answer on the Internet (as I did), didn't get help but mostly found stupid suggestions like, "Perhaps you accidently changed your font setting," when the real problem was they were using some poorly developed cleaner and they never considered their problem was software that was supposed to be making their life easier instead of harder.

 

I was going to write you a letter, but your own dialog requested that if it's a bug, I put the info in the forum and that made me consider the people that have the same problem and never think your software is causing it.

 

I haven't used cleanup utilities for a decade because I saw that so much software was crap and once I found out what places needed to be cleaned, it was simple enough to clean them regularly myself.

 

However, when my friend bought a new computer and used your program and thought so highly of it, I decided to give it a try with XP Pro.

 

It many hours of my life and screwed up my computer for two weeks.

 

The short version is this:

 

I was off the Internet for almost two years and disconnected my antivirus and anti-trojan software because I didn't need it.

 

When I got back on, I didn't think I needed to jump so very fast to get all sorts of protection, since I wasn't looking for trouble.

 

However, when I rebooted my computer one day and all my text everywhere except in DOS boxes was nothing but symbols, I thought I had picked up a virus that some kid had thought was cute to make.

 

I restored my image on two or three hdds (because I had done a lot of work that hadn't been imaged yet and hoped that I could clean my main c:\ drive) and it kept happening again, which I thought was weird because the only drive that was still connected was a slave that I use for storage and I was of the opinion that viruses attack Windows and when c: is moved, viruses lose their effectiveness to migrate but nevertheless the same problem kept happening.

 

Well, after about six image restorations on three disks, as I was running Crappy Cleaner, I noticed that it was about to remove every one of my font references in the registry.

 

Well, I backed up first, put the backup on my bare desktop (because nothing could be read with those screwy symbols), clicked to do the cleaning and rebooted. Sure enough, the same illegible characters reappeared so I clicked on the backup reg file and rebooted and my fonts were restored.

 

What crappy software writing and what headaches and many wasted hours you cost me.

 

I do hope you learn something from this and fix this stupid problem.

 

I know this doesn't sound very gracious but what were you thinking to allow such a bad error as removing all font references?

[ident]

So why did you remove the displayed entry's if you had no clue to what they was?

 

When it comes down to registry cleaning it is down to the user to check what entry's are listed for deletion. Not the application.

 

"What crappy software writing and what headaches and many wasted hours you cost me."

 

You cost it your self by not checking.

 

My advice to you is stay away from registry cleaning.

[mr don]

The Topic Title and Topic Description are to help those poor unfortunate folks who think they have a virus that's screwing up their computer and are looking for an answer on the Internet (as I did), didn't get help but mostly found stupid suggestions like, "Perhaps you accidently changed your font setting," when the real problem was they were using some poorly developed cleaner and they never considered their problem was software that was supposed to be making their life easier instead of harder.

 

I was going to write you a letter, but your own dialog requested that if it's a bug, I put the info in the forum and that made me consider the people that have the same problem and never think your software is causing it.

 

I haven't used cleanup utilities for a decade because I saw that so much software was crap and once I found out what places needed to be cleaned, it was simple enough to clean them regularly myself.

 

However, when my friend bought a new computer and used your program and thought so highly of it, I decided to give it a try with XP Pro.

 

It many hours of my life and screwed up my computer for two weeks.

 

The short version is this:

 

I was off the Internet for almost two years and disconnected my antivirus and anti-trojan software because I didn't need it.

 

When I got back on, I didn't think I needed to jump so very fast to get all sorts of protection, since I wasn't looking for trouble.

 

However, when I rebooted my computer one day and all my text everywhere except in DOS boxes was nothing but symbols, I thought I had picked up a virus that some kid had thought was cute to make.

 

I restored my image on two or three hdds (because I had done a lot of work that hadn't been imaged yet and hoped that I could clean my main c:\ drive) and it kept happening again, which I thought was weird because the only drive that was still connected was a slave that I use for storage and I was of the opinion that viruses attack Windows and when c: is moved, viruses lose their effectiveness to migrate but nevertheless the same problem kept happening.

 

Well, after about six image restorations on three disks, as I was running Crappy Cleaner, I noticed that it was about to remove every one of my font references in the registry.

 

Well, I backed up first, put the backup on my bare desktop (because nothing could be read with those screwy symbols), clicked to do the cleaning and rebooted. Sure enough, the same illegible characters reappeared so I clicked on the backup reg file and rebooted and my fonts were restored.

 

What crappy software writing and what headaches and many wasted hours you cost me.

 

I do hope you learn something from this and fix this stupid problem.

 

I know this doesn't sound very gracious but what were you thinking to allow such a bad error as removing all font references?

 

 

CCleaner is a very safe system cleaner. I do assume you are referring to the registry cleaner. Although attempts have been made to make it safe, registry cleaning is still hit & miss at best. It is there, however, because rogue programs like Symantec frequently leave corrupted uninstallers that do not work, making it nearly impossible to remove. Users can scan for the Symantec keys listed after manually eradicating those folders, & get the ability to install a better AV back.

 

This is just an example, of course, but the advice is to either never use reg cleaning, or watch every key you checkmark before cleaning.

 

Is this what you did, use the registry cleaner?