writeaway

Yes. And yes, again. Be very careful. I cannot use the "unused" file extension part of the program. It would destroy many files associated with my (many) applications. I think CCleaner only recognizes some file extensions and so thinks anything not in its database is invalid. Mostly I stay away from the registry cleaner as it has caused me problems. I run the scan. If I know EXACTLY what something is AND that it is safe to get rid of it, MAYBE it gets deleted, and then, ONLY after I have backed up the registry.

I have the same issue - and so do many others. My advice is - Don't. By your own admission, you don't know what will happen if you do. Why take such a risk? I use a lot of shareware that is not well-known. CCleaner always lists them. I NEVER let CCleaner delete those references. Maybe what Nergal says, "usually these items show because the software that uses the extentions doesn't register it's handling correctly" is true. Still, there they are and my software is working just fine. I won't risk it quitting and then having to reinstall, contact the vendor to convince them that I have a license, and no, I'm not installing on another computer, yada yada, and then waste more time getting the application set up the way it once was. Every time I've used the registry cleaner, it has caused me problems. Some minor but once, major. My system is speedy and set up just the way I like it. Having suffered through one disaster, I do everything possible to avoid another.

Thank you hazelnut for answering. Maybe I didn't make myself clear. I understand how adding comments is done. That's what I've been doing. What I was trying to say is: It isn't working anymore. Once the Date Modified is changed, the metadata is deleted.

Kinda desperate here. I've always used the Comments field/column in Windows Explorer to keep notes on files. It is hugely helpful to me with my hundreds of files. Recently, I discovered that my notes are disappearing when I make a change to a file and save it. I clung to SP 2 for as long as possible before I installed SP3. Did Microsoft take out the ability to use the Properties dialogue box for anything useful? If that is the case, what can I do to salvage my hundreds of notes? Is there some software out there that will allow me to make notes/comments in a way that I could see the information in Explorer? Is there an Explorer replacement that I could use that will give some way to write a description of my files? Thanks.

I never remove anything from the registry without knowing exactly what it is. In a few minutes (probably) someone wiser than I will post here and ask you if you backed up the registry before cleaning it. I hope you did. Then they will tell you what to do and how to do it. My suggestion is about Geek Squad. DON'T. They do the same thing to everybody. A full restore. Duh! Even I could do that myself. Restore! Restore! Restore! It's the only word they know. It's the only thing they do. Use your phone book. Find yourself a nice, honest geek who's trying to make a living. I live in a small town. There are two or three here. Their vocabulary is not limited to one word. They actually carry on conversations with me. And ask me what I want. AND they listen to my answers. AND they don't charge me three fingers and a toe. If this gets too complicated and you were going to upgrade to Win7 anyway, maybe now would be a good time. Just don't ask the Geek Squad to install it for you. Good luck.

You were told right. I've had nothing but problems using reg cleaners. Why? because I don't understand the registry and am unable to make wise decisions about what to "clean" and what to leave alone. Extra entries in your registry does not harm your system at all. Get rid of your temp files and cookies and internet history and MRUs - if you must. BUT leave the registry alone until such time as you have achieved a high level of expertise. OR - Use ERUNT to back up the registry BEFORE you destroy it so you can put it back IF you can get into your system up and running again.

Interesting. I had the opposite problem. I couldn't get it to stop running - and eating up all the CPU. Once upon a time it was a clean little, well-behaved app but that was before the birth of the monster, Anniversary Edition. I had to get rid of it and that wasn't easy either. It will never darken my hard drive again. Malware Bytes, on the other hand, is sweet on the system.

I could write tomes on the ghastly experience that ensued when I came home happily carting my new HP computer. Maybe I should have said "ghostly" experience because the computer was certainly haunted. I had HP on the phone for hours - on several different occasions - screaming, well, speaking loudly, at them trying to get help to turn it into something usable. At last, I'm sure he was very weary of hearing from me, the tech (brave man, the conversation was likely being recorded) whispered to me what I already knew, "I'll tell you something. It is the OEM." The OEM OS was like one big virus. No matter what programs I uninstalled, they popped right back up again. Surfing the internet was a nightmare of popups that no popup blocker could stop. Etc., etc., etc., And etc. This was my solution: I went to the store and spent another $200 on my very own out-of-the box Microsoft WindowsXP. I wiped the hard drive (with a little help from a friend) and all my problems went away. I love my computer now and I will buy another HP one day. When I do, I will do so knowing that I'll have to invest extra $ on whatever OS I want to use. A year ago, I purchased an HP printer. They make the best printers ever - but once again, I had problems with the bloated software that came with it. I took it back to the store and traded for a Brother which doesn't bog down my system. I will not buy another HP printer.

When new versions of software become available - especially browsers - I wait. And I read all the chatter about them online. My preferred browser has long been FF, but complaints about the 3.0 version stopped me from installing it. Now 3.5 is the current version and I am still with 2.0.0.20 because I've been unsuccessful in my attempts to update. (That's what I'm doing here today in fact, looking for a solution to my FF install problem.) In the past, I used IE only for Windows Updates, but now, because of the version I am running, FireFox is causing insurmountable problems for me on certain websites, most notably my banking and credit card sites. SO - I'm having to use IE8 more and more. It's fast. It works. It does not slow my XP system down at all. I'm thinking that whatever caused its poor performance initially has been fixed. The way things are, I'm very glad to have it.

I would like to warn you to be as cautious with "unused file extensions" as I hope you are with registry cleaning. I have learned the hard way that clearing CC's list of what it deems "unused" trashes most of my file associations. I didn't learn this the first time, it took 2 cleanings for me to realize what had happened. I had to spend hours fixing file associations, not once, but twice. So - unless you know for certain - what that file extension was associated with, I suggest leaving it alone.

Since no one else had answered your post, I will share my small knowledge of registry cleaners with you - learned the hard way. A sure way to eventually destroy your system or at least render it senseless is to blindly clean the registry. Even a program as gentle as CCleaner will cause you problems if you delete registry items without understanding exactly what they are. Many people NEVER run a registry cleaner. Nothing bad happens to them. I run CCleaner about 1x/mo. - after backing up the registry with ERUNT - choosing one item at a time. Then I dig through all the "suggestions" and delete only the ones I know are safe to delete. Since adopting this method I've had no problems with my system. Is my registry overlarge? Probably. So what? Computer is fast. Everything is working as it should. Why are you running CCleaner all day? Why are you concerned about one item showing up? My advice: Find something else to do with your time or you will be restoring your system once again - a nightmare I'm sure you don't want to repeat.

I'm sure your intentions were good but - of course you got fired. The fact that you, and others, are surprised and outraged is amazing. Thanks for the laugh, and good luck with your job search. I'd advise you not mention your history to any potential employers.

Hi All, I'm still using AVG 7.5. Yeah, I've been getting a message every morning that time has run out. However, when I manually check for updates, I get updates. And, for the last two days, it has been automatically updating again. I've been meaning to ditch it and install either Avast or Avira but just haven't gotten around to it . Glad to see all the posts about Avira because I sure don't want that right click problem so many of you describe. Thanks for the warning.

I am no tech. Someone with some expertise will come along shortly and answer your question. I just wanted to put my 2 cents in about service packs. You didn't say why you felt that you had to install SP3 and maybe you have a good reason. I just wanted to tell you that I have NOT installed SP3 and have no intention of doing so. I am still using XP, SP2. No issues. No problems. The only time I had any problem was while I was still allowing automatic updates and MS kept trying to install SP3. I've cut that off and that was the end of that. There are loads of folks out there who chose to stick with SP1. Good luck with your problem.

Thanks. I'm working on that. Unfortunately it isn't as easy as it first seemed. I was hoping the backup would eventually embrace drag and drop but there have been no updates/upgrades for all the time I've had it - over a year. I can't complain, the program (SecondCopy) works fine, it's just a little cumbersome and I can't afford to rush out and purchase another one.

Hey, thanks YoKenny. Mystery solved. I will sleep much better - at nap time

My backup program runs automatically in the background. Once a week it is set to backup C:\Documents and Settings. Every time it runs I get a number of error messages that say: Cannot copy file - and it names the file - the process cannot access the file because it is being used by another process. The files it lists are: C:\Documents and Settings\LocalService\Cookies\index.dat C:\Documents and Settings\LocalService\Local Sttings\History.IE5\index.dat C:\Documents and Settings\LocalService\Local Settings\Temporary Internet Files\Content.IE5\index.dat C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\History Explorer\DB\HistoryExplorer.db C:\Documents and Settings\Owner\Cookies\index.dat And a load of AVG files. I don't want to backup any of the files listed. However, I don't understand what process would be accessing them. I understand about the AVG files, but the others look like Internet Explorer files to me. IE is not open. I only use it for patch Tuesday. I am not connected to the internet. There is surely a perfectly logical explanation but I would sure like to know what it is. HP Pavilion - Pentium® 4CPU 160GB HDD 512 MB RAM Windows XP SP2 Home

CCleaner shows most of my programs' file extensions as "Unused File Extensions". They are definitely NOT unused - in fact they are used daily - and I have never understood this glitch either. I strongly suggest that you do NOT clean them or even touch them. I did that ONE time. Ever since, if I try opening one of these application's files from Explorer, I get the "Windows doesn't know what program . . . " message. Maybe, that won't happen to you but why risk it? Yours is not the first post on this topic. I've never seen an adequate answer.

Be very careful of AVG. I've used it for years but in the last few months it has deleted - yes, DELETED - no less than 4 programs that were NOT infected with anything. Digging around in Windows Explorer one day I found an Access file that is the whole year's accounting for my husband's business for 2002 in AVG's Virus vault. I'm just lucky it didn't delete that too. I'm afraid to let AVG run. Time to get something else.

Hi. I'm back all these days later because I have been waiting for an email telling me there had been a reply. Guess I didn't get myself signed up to be notified. Thanks for all the helpful input. I have downloaded Cleanmem as some of you suggested and I downloaded TweakNow as Andavari suggested and I will be searching out the .PF file for my little crashers. Really appreciate the help.

PC is taking a long time to load programs. I run several good-sized applications at once and, occasionally, one crashes. While monitoring memory usage, I see it runs quite high, using up very nearly all the ram. Yeah, know, get more. I've been checking out shareware (again) looking at MemWatcher and Memory Boost. They both claim to free up memory when you need it. Whadd'ya think? Anybody ever use either of these programs? Think they are useless? Know of free alternatives? I anxiously await your priceless advice. Thanks.

Be very careful. There is a huge difference between services.exe and service.exe (same name without the "s"). Because of the almost identical names, people are confused by them. Services.exe - which your error messages reference - is part of the windows operating system that is used to stop and start services. Either you, thinking it was the trojan identified by AVG, or AVG itself has deleted it. Service.exe may very well be a virus. Google them both. See what you think then.

Until recently, I struggled with dial-up. Regardless, I hated having to go online for help and I still do. I never purchase software of any kind that does not come with a good help file. CCleaner is about the only thing on my computer that doesn't have one. So - there's my twopence. Oh yeah. I loved the Freudian slip too

Using FileSnoop this a.m. I found I could only view files with it. The search icons were grayed out. Next, I noticed that the list of files it was showing had several in red. One of them was FileSnoop itself. In case you are not familiar with the application, it lists files with Read Only attributes in red text. Alarmed, I checked out the list only to discover several more folders are now Read Only AND a couple (only found a few so far) programs. The scariest part is the folders that are now Read Only are: Downloads, EruntRegistryBackups, FileMap-by-BB(notifies me when something has changed on the system), Maps (a file storing maps), MSOCashe, MyIcons, MyPimFiles, MyPrograms, MyWeb pages, Program Files, and my favorite, WINDOWS. Others are system files, IO.SYS, MSDOS.SYS, NTDETECT.COM, ntldr. In Documents and Settings: All Users and Owner. Ini files and configurations have changed. The Topics folder for one of my PIMs was changed to Read Only. I opened the application all right but the files did not show up like they usually do. When I tried to open one, I found the Open Dialog box had reverted to My Documents - which is NOT where I store the files. I was able to return the default folder to where it belonged and then open a file and edit it. All the folder settings in Windows Explorer have reverted back to being sorted by Date Modified (@!?*). That happens every once in a while and at the same time all my folder views/sizes revert back to whatever it is that Windows prefers. I don't know why. I am unable to change the file attributes. The Folders Options applet does not allow me to make any changes - hasn't for over a year now. Again, I don't know why. I think this all happened this morning because I can see that the .ini file for FileSnoop shows it was modified this a.m. but I haven't been looking at file attributes for a while. Nothing shows up on scans of the system (AVG Anti-Virus, AVG Anti-Spyware, SUPERAntiSpyware). Any ideas?