CCleaner Won't Start?

[Silicon Giraffe]

Hey there, I finally decided to register for the Piriform forums 'cause I'm having a bit of an issue. I've been using CCleaner for a number of years now with no problems, but recently I had to do a HD wipe/reinstall of my OS (Win XP SP3) and since then, CCleaner has refused to work for me. I've reinstalled several times, ran virus checks with no results, and tried running as another user. Nothing seems to work.

 

The actual issue? It's the oddest thing, actually. I've searched the forums here and used Google to find a solution, and the best I've come up with is a topic here from a while back with a guy having similar issues to mine. However, his problem was because his OS was outdated and he had some kind of malware or something along those lines. Anyway, the problem occurs when I try to run CCleaner. In any way, actually, even the "Run as administrator" option in XP. It opens, then instantly closes itself less than a second later. It's not even running in the background, I checked task manager and the CCleaner.exe under Processes pops in and out just as fast.

 

The only solution I've seen is to re-install (which I've done several times), or to uncheck "Close after cleaning." However... I don't know how I'm supposed to change this option if I can't get the program to stay open for more than a quarter of a second. I consider myself a somewhat advanced user, so this frustrates me because I can't figure out what's wrong. Any help would be much appreciated. Piriform makes great software, I'd hate to have to stop using it over something that's probably an easy fix.

[hazelnut]

Does it start in safe mode?

[Silicon Giraffe]

No, safe mode has the same problem.

[DennisD]

 

The only solution I've seen is to re-install (which I've done several times), or to uncheck "Close after cleaning." However... I don't know how I'm supposed to change this option if I can't get the program to stay open for more than a quarter of a second.

 

If changing that setting would make CCleaner work, it's worth trying. It's somewhere to start at least.

 

If you have CCleaner configured to "Save all settings to INI file", you can go into the CCleaner folder ... "C:\Program Files\CCleaner", open the ccleaner.ini and edit the AutoClose=1 entry to =0. Then save it:

 

 

If you don't use the INI option, then you can edit the same entry in the registry using RegEdit.

 

Navigate to "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Piriform\CCleaner", and edit the 1 to 0, as shown below:

 

 

Maybe the first step in a process of elimination to find a fix.

 

 

EDIT: Welcome to Piriform by the way.

[Silicon Giraffe]

Oh wow, I'll be sure to use that options, 'cause an .ini file would come in handy now. That's just really useful, yay Piriform!

 

If you don't use the INI option, then you can edit the same entry in the registry using RegEdit.

I assume you mean the default one in system32?

 

Now, here's where it gets weird. It's a great idea to use RegEdit to fix this, 'cause I actually know what you're talking about and have used it before. However it's... it's exhibiting the same problem. It opens and closes itself within a second. And it's just this, nothing else has been affected, so it's not any kind of malware. CCleaner and the regedt32.exe in system32 are the only two problems not working.

 

So maybe it's something having to do with programs that affect the registry? If that is the case... what could have caused the problem, and how in the world would I go about fixing it?

[hazelnut]

By the way you don't need to go into system32 to use regedit, just do start>run and type in regedit in the box and press ok.

 

Can you please check if CCleaner and regedit will work in safe mode.

 

If it does it may mean you need help with 'nasties' that may be hiding from you.

 

If you are unsure about how to get into safe mode just see here

 

http://www.pchell.com/support/safemode.shtml

[Silicon Giraffe]

*points several posts up*

 

I already posted about that, lol, I've been waiting for what you have to say about it. Again, neither program works in Safe Mode.

[hazelnut]

I must have missed your reply somehow

 

Perhaps consider following what steps you can here, and posting any logs you are able to do in the Spyware Hell part of the forum. This will allow the Spyware Moderator to help you.

 

 

http://forum.piriform.com/index.php?showtopic=20120

[Silicon Giraffe]

Well it's obvious from the few scans I've run that I have some kind of malware in my registry, which explains the software issues. Obviously, it's blocking any changes that can be made to the registry to protect itself. I'll post a thread in the malware forum after I finish all the scans and... get a night's sleep, lol. It's about 2:40 am for me, I think I'll continue tomorrow.