Augeas

I guess the original poster has either found an answer, got over his loss, or died of old age by now. I also guess that nobody bothers to take backups these days. Yes, it's boring, but it would eradicate not only half the cries for help here, but the time wasted by others trying to help the feckless.

I wouldn't want CC (or anything) to delete all empty folders just based on the fact that they're empty, so that means some selection process. If you select you may as well just use shift/del without bothering CC. I don't think that empty folders slow a pc at all, apart from some minor effect on file reorganising utilities.

If you uninstalled the game (using Control Panel/Add Remove Programs) then you will not only have lost many files and folders but registry entries too. It's not possible to use Recuva to reinstall programs, you will hav eto use the installation disk. If you have just deleted one exe file, then it would usually go to the Recycle bin (recycler). It will be there under its correct name. If you have emptied the recycle bin then the file will be renamed to something like Dc1.exe. You can use Recuva to search for this file based on file extension or date of delete, and recover it. If it's some time since you deleted the file then it may have been overwritten: in this case it is not recoverable.

Where does CC come in to your procedure? Do you install Roxio V10, then run it and it's OK, then without running CC Roxio won't open again, or do you install Roxio V10, and then run CC, and then Roxio won't open again? Does Roxio run fine as long as you don't run CC? If you're running CC, do you do any registry cleaning or just file cleaning? What CC options are you using?

Windows flusehes entries that are older than a few weeks - from the XP manual. I can't really see any point in getting rid of them, they'll be as soon as you launch a program and they take up little space, and actually make your pc a gnat's elbow faster.

NO (but then I'm not on Vista) but the thing I've noticed is that when you click on Check for Updates it opens the CC page in an existing open window, so it is easy to sit there waiting and miss the response elsewhere.

Sometimes Recuva marks files as excellent when they are not properly recoverable, and vice versa. It's just software trying to evaluate the state of the file. There is nothing addtional that you should be doing, apart from using an up-to-date version of Recuva, so the files may well be lost forever.

Strangley enough, when I first installed Recuva 1.11.257 I noticed this and posted as such on here. But later I noticed that it had swapped to the correct headings, without me doing anything. Piriform software is indeed wondrous strange.

And another thing just came to me, if you have deleted pictures from your camera memory card, and then taken more pictures, you will have overwritten some of the pics on the mem card - they won't be recoverable. I don't know what hubby was trying to do, but if it was deliberate then write BACKUPS on a large board and hit him on the head with it.

Yes, although I've never had to do this myself. Have you run Recova on your pc? Just wondering if there's anything left in the MFT - probably not but give it a go.

I don't use the portable version so I can't be sure, but I guess it will have the default settings to start with. Whether it carries over any change in settings when it's moved to another pc I'm not sure. Maybe someone else knows.

You need to download and install the portable version (found in other builds). Then the exe can be copied and shared with impunity.

Right click on the registry backup you took before your unfortunate deletion, and select merge. This will restore your registry as it was when you did the backup. No backup? Hmmm. Over to someone else with more experience in adding registry entries, or reinstall.

I would guess that you load the device, be it flash drive, mem card, etc., open Recuva, change the drive letter to the device letter, run scan, and recover what you want from the scan list. You can happily recover to your pc hard drive as it will naturally not be overwriting anything on your external device.

CC is a fairly conservative application which makes it safe for the majority of users, especially those who may not be familiar with O/S internals. Other cleaners may be more aggressive and suited to the more experienced user. There's no way in which anyone can give you a yes or no regarding cleaning all your crap without going through every file and relating it to your pc setup. Some files are fairly obviously unwanted, others may be more difficult to evaluate. It's really up to you to decide whether to take the risk of deletion. Just back them up first. Rgds.

Can't answer your questions, but I have always ticked this box, with no (noticable) bad effect. I don't notice any Office-related files coming up in the delete list, so maybe I have nothing there to clean. In other word ticking this box seems safe to me.

Doesn't CC run the analysis stage anyway however you use it, so running Clean right away is just as long, but it saves one click I suppose. Rambo just sprays bullets from his huge weapon in all directions and the opposition (mainly foreigners, so we don't worry so much) just drop like flies. Yet when twenty of the baddies spray him, he miraculously manages to dodge all of the flak. I wish I knew where he bought his lucky headband. The best must be Lewis last night. During an interview he takes a dna swab from the suspects. A few minutes later a knock on the door and - It's a match, Guv! By the way, CCleaner is excellent, just the right mix of usefulness and dangerousness for most users. I haven't used Eraser though. Rgds.

CC takes a long time in the analysis stage when one isn't overwriting anything. I don't use secure delete as my normal option and I wait. Yes, 35 overwrites is the equivalent to Silvester Stallone movies - you just don't have to use that many bullets.

If you open the Info tab for the file, does it say that the file has been overwritten?

The folder or your daughter?

What's the significance of the pear?

I should be a little careful when modifying the registry until you're more familiar with it. I believe that CCleaner is a fairly safe registry cleaner, erring on the cautious side, but it's best to backup of course and then just clean a few known things at a time until you are more confident (I don't have a clean registry, I'm a little cautious too). If you see anything that obvoiusly belongs to software you no longer have, such as - in my case - AOL or McAfee, then clean that up. Delete entries one at a time and look at the reason that CC gives, if it says left over from an install or removal then it is probably OK to get rid of it. I don't think that an untidy registry slows the PC down much, if at all. I guess the registry is indexed so the spare entries don't really do any harm, except as an afront to your sense of tidyness.

If a usb isn't large enough then a usb attached hard drive will do, or you can keep swapping the flash drive and copying data to your backup pc. I don't think you have a cat in hell's chance of recovering 48gb of usable data. You may be lucky with some folders, but don't put money on it. I have never used Windows System Restore, so can't really advise. I don't think it restores data files but you may be lucky with the program files folder. I'm sure someone here will know about it. Rgds.

Do you mean that you've removed a program using Windows Control Panel Add/Remove? If so then you will have to reinstall the program, as it will be almost impossible to identify the deleted files and folders, and there are other associated changes, register entries, etc.

To ensure that you have the best chance of recovering deleted files you should stop all activity on the disk, and on your pc if that is what it means, immediately. In other words leave your pc booted up and either use another pc or a friend's pc to initiate the recovery process. Every time you boot up your pc, or open your browser, or email, or post to this site, or touch anything on your pc you are writing files, temporary or otherwise, to your hard drive. These files will be written in the most effective place on your hard drive to allow fast write and retrieval. They will be put in free space on top of whatever deleted files were there before. The more activity there is on this drive the more likely that files you want to be recovered will be overwritten. Overwritten files cannot be recovered. This is the reason why Recuva asks if you want to recover to the same drive. It's bad practice. On another pc download and install Recuva to a usb device. Plug the usb into your problem pc. Run Recuva and recover what files you want to the usb. Continue until you have all the files you want or can find. Then you can start reloading them to your problem pc. The condition of the deleted files, excellent, poor etc is an attempt by Recuva to classify the file and is not necessarily that accurate. If you look at the file info and it says that this file has been overwritten then it's highly unlikely that you will get anything back from it. If it doesn't say that then there's an excellent chance of recovery. Good luck!