Alan_B

I always expect to have links listed within ...\recent\... I clean the links with all the rest of the junk, but the important stuff they designate is NOT damaged. I would guess that Norton may have been used recently, and perhaps it is merely those recent links that have caused an understandable panic. Alan

Another possibility is that some PORTABLE SOFTWARE applications may create a "status" file as they start, so that when they close they can restore the system status (registry keys etc.) as it was. This "status" file is temporary and only needed for the duration that rthe application is running. I have seen such files in the appropriate location, i.e. temporary files - just what CCleaner loves to eat ! ! Open Office is available in a portable flavour. Alan

fireryone Your motto is "Lets Get Dangerous" - perhaps that is also your life style. I have a different ethos, and generally have two or more disaster recovery plans in hand. I think he should be scared - if he does the wrong thing he will do more damage. As you yourself admit, "We don't know the users full situation yet". How do you know that he is not on the verge of a big mistake ? If he has downloaded any file recovery utility onto C:\ that action will destroy any deleted files that occupied "empty" space, and if he recovers a deleted file onto C:\ that action will overwrite more "empty" space in which were further deleted files. I sincerely believe that if the poster wants to get a lot more experience of fixing a P.C. then he should accept any advice you (or others) may offer. But if loss of "all e-mail, all of her contact files, family pictures and family contacts, business contacts of 25 years" would damage domestic bliss, his idea "to have someone come in and find it somewhere on the hard drive?" is definitely the safer way to go. Alan

I always use the Portable build and unzip into a non-system partition. No problems. Go to http://www.ccleaner.com/download/builds Second item down is CCleaner v2.23.999 - Portable I have just downloaded and unzipped to a USB Flash drive and it seems to work perfectly. I much prefer the previous versions that gave detailed results as a default, so I wont be using it. Alan

Sorry, I did not intend to flame him. I certainly did not intend to imply that he had willingly gone to an "illegal" site to get for free what is always free from this site. BUT there are counterfeit sites that also claim to offer CCleaner. I accept that some "users have had CCleaner act unusually on their system"; but I think this forum has also been visited by people with such problems which were eventually determined to be caused by their being fooled into downloading a CCleaner that never originated from Piriform, and sometimes they were additionally fooled into paying for the privilege. From the beginning I have wondered if the problem might just be that some shortcuts had been lost, hence Open Office "recent documents" would show nothing - but the documents would be there if he knew where to look. That is a very small problem that is easily corrected, but the lack of understanding communication shown so far causes me to fear that a simple instruction might be wrongly interpreted, and a bootable computer become unbootable - and if he has no installation CD that is another expense. I believe the safest and cheapest way for him to cure this problem is what he suggested in the first post, i.e. "Is there any way to have someone come in and find it somewhere on the hard drive?" I think most locations that have internet access will also have a local computer repair shop that will help for a fee. This forum is free and probably has more skill and experience than many such repair shops, BUT misunderstandings within this topic could result in drastic loss of data that may still be available. The cost of the repair shop could be considered as insurance against loss of important files. e.g. the repair shop man probably has Recuva or an equivalent on his own flash drive, and he will understand that he must NOT download any file recovery utility to the drive with lost files, and that he must not restore any recovered files to the drive that had lost files. Without such understanding any lost files will be additionally mutilated. Regards Alan

That tells me nothing. Your answer appears totally wrong. You were asked "Did you just do an ordinary clean or did you do a registry clean as well?" That is two different options. I just cannot see on my system your choice of "clean everything off of the computer". I suspect you made a foolish mistake and downloaded the wrong CCleaner from a bad web-site, and it is an imitation malware ridden version that offers "clean everything off of the computer". and that is intended as a GOTCHA for the unwary. I get 9,850,000 results for a Google search of "CCleaner", and top of the list are legitimate sites such as www.ccleaner.com, www.filehippo.com, and download.cnet.com. There are alternative NON-legitimate sites that may do you harm. I get 938,000 for a Google search of "CCleaner.net", about which I have misgivings ! ! ! I found very interesting the site http://fileshunt.com/rapidshare.php?file=ccleaner+v2 Amongst the goodies (baddies ? ?) on offer were "CCleaner.v2.17.853 dellopos.rar" Is that a peek into the future ! ! I believe that unless you slaved your wife's hard drive to your P.C. or ran a BOOT CD, it is only because you still have a bootable operating system that you know that you have lost "all e-mail, all of her contact files, family pictures and family contacts, business contacts of 25 years." You should count yourself fortunate indeed that you can still boot the computer. If in fact you Downloaded a good legitimate version of CCleaner that is free of errors, then you need to be much more accurate in the understanding of questions and the giving of answers, or you may soon kill the operating system and have to re-install Windows. Regards Alan

Corrections :- A) According to http://www.oanda.com/convert/classic 1 US Dollar = 0.61560 British Pound so 20 dollar = ?13.30, not ?34 I was NOT judging you without reading your posts. I have followed this topic since you started it, and agree with others that you were mistaken, and think that you should not expect Piriform to suffer the consequences of your mistakes. I am aware of some software that is free of charge but with limitations, and for a fee is available with the limitations removed. I can understand you thinking that very useful software such as CCleaner could be crippled unless you paid an un-crippling fee. I DO NOT UNDERSTAND why you chose for yourself an "un-crippling fee/donation" of 20 bucks, perhaps that could have merited an intermediate level of un-crippling, and for the maximum "advanced" level of usefulness you should have paid 100 bucks (or only 10 bucks.) Every piece of software that I know of is either free of charge, or has a stipulated cost, and some do both, i.e. restricted usefulness or nag-screens etc or perhaps a 30 day free trial. Some File recovery programs are free to use and show you the deleted files they have detected, but then wait for a stipulated payment before they will undelete them. All software that I know of is either free, or has a clearly stipulated and specific payment requirement, I have never encountered anything that requires a payment without stipulating the exact cost. Sorry for the mini rant - just had to get it off my chest. I don't need a reply to the above, but please consider and act upon the following :- The main purpose of my post was to point out to you, and to any-one who has come across this lengthy thread which seems to have developed into prolonged repeated begging for a refund, that your expectations were totally unreasonable. I am sure Piriform never received the whole donation :- Pay Pal etc are NOT charities and will have deducted their cut; Banking is free for many individuals, but companies have to use suitable business accounts which charge for every transaction, both payments and receipts; Tax will be chargeable on the donation, and is unlikely to be recovered without an adequate audit trail. Then there is the time, effort, and cost of wages for accounts to validate your claim to have made a donation of 20 bucks and to determine whether it is bucks USA or bucks British ! !, and to ensure that any repayment is made to the correct person. I am fairly certain that had Piriform given a refund that exactly balanced the costs to them of this whole sorry episode, at least 5 bucks (whatever a buck is) would have been retained to balance their costs and taxes. When actually did you know that Piriform would give you a refund ? I think upon getting the refund you should have immediately posted a glowing testimony to the remarkable generosity of Piriform. This was a very generous goodwill gesture that has probably cost them in excess of 5 bucks (whatever a buck is) in terms of administration costs, taxes, and other expenses. It appears to me to be very bad form that only when responding to my post showing the costs involved in giving a refund do you finally admit to having had a refund. FOR PIRIFORM TO GIVE A COMPLETE REFUND REGARDLESS OF THEIR CONSEQUENT LOSSES AND TAXES IS EXCEPTIONALLY GENEROUS. Alan

All you have to do is Google for MSIZAP Alan

The only ways I can see to make a donation are on the bottom left corner of http://www.piriform.com/about Neither Pay Pal nor Nochex is configured with a default of any amount, so the 20 bucks (American or British I do not know) was a free choice, not a stipulated cost. Twenty years ago large companies dealing with one another would have costs and charges for everything. It was not unknown to have a paperwork processing charge of ?20 to cover all the costs of raising an invoice and subsequently reconciling the payment against the invoice. Piriform is a private company with London West End offices. It is more than probable that they have to pay V.A.T. and other taxes on any source of income (including donations). Were Piriform to repay 20 bucks then they would probably still have to pay the V.A.T. etc. so the temporary 20 buck donation would actually cost them more than 20 bucks. Additionally, I suspect that due to the Pay Pal / Nochex route by which the payment was made, Piriform do not have a complete audit trail of the payment from a donor's bank account, and that could cause great problems with money laundering regulations. Finally were they to refund a donation, they might have to pay an accountant to establish a new procedure that is acceptable to company Auditors, and perhaps overtime to the girl in accounts who then has to follow that procedure. I am sorry, but were Piriform to refund a donation of any amount, it would probably cost them more than ?20. Regards Alan

Any one who wants a quick easy 3rd party GUI to enable/disable services does not know how thin is the ice they are walking on. As already stated, use services.msc. One of its benefits is that it tells you about dependencies, which give due warning to the prudent of imminent disasters. Alan

Simply download the portable version of CCleaner which does NOT need to be installed When you launch it you will see which of your applications are cleaned by default. If you download Winapp2.ini into the same folder, and run again, you will see many more applications that can be cleaned. If you consider it inadequate, you can add to Winapp2.ini, or you can simply delete the whole folder - it does not need uninstalling, and the registry was not affected. Alan

Probably nothing to do with CCleaner. You are probably blocked by something. Perhaps you are working at User level without adequate privileges. Perhaps I.E.8 is configured to allow almost nothing. (I remember when conficker came along, Microsoft could not stop it, and their initial advice was to delve into tricky security settings within I.E. to minimize risk, and this especially applied to people who never use I.E. knowingly, it is just that I.E. is part of the bloat baggage that comes with Windows.) Do not meddle with Regedit unless you are aware of the dangers. If you are up for the danger you could export a registry key, and then import it back. If that is successful, then you can try importing your backup files. Post again if you are not prepared to take the risk, and other possibilities may be suggested. Alan

There is a fundamental error here. Perhaps it is me, but I think it is every-one else that is not marching in step ! ! ! But I am willing to continue learning. Is every one agreed on the definition of "Wipe files" ? To me that implies use of Options -> Settings -> Secure File Deletion, using 1, 3, 7, or 35 passes. I have always understood that index.dat could not be purged under Windows, and that all CCleaner could do was "mark it for deletion". I also assumed that this "mark" told the O.S. at next start-up to delete the file, after which a new empty file is automatically created. Question. Now that CCleaner can do a 35 pass wipe, does Windows also honour that requirement when deleting Index.dat ? And if so how ? Regards Alan

Is it not prudent for CCleaner to consider any Release Candidate as being a "Work in Progress", and liable to drastic revision ? I do not consider an announcement of an Opera change from Beta to R.C. status as a reason for a knee-jerk reaction. For those who want an instant change to CCleaner, is not Winapp2.ini the proven established mechanism ? Alan

Click top of page item "My Assistant". A small window appears, bottom left option under "Information" is "My Last 10 Posts". Alan

I have no experience of IEv8, and for now I am content with Firefox, and bitterly regret that M.S. have made it impossible to remove their monstrous security risk. I keep I.E.7 fully up to date, but never use it intentionally. Very few sites mis-behave when I use Firefox, and those which do mis-behave have immediately given me cause to go elsewhere. I do not mind if you use I.E.7 or I.E.8, but I do object to I.E.6. I believe I.E.6 is beyond redemption and is no longer supported by Microsoft, so not many third party applications will be written or adapted for I.E.6. IMHO it is safer to walk through a crowded shopping mall with credit cards on display and clipped to the tail of a jacket than it is to use I.E.6 ! ! ! If you use I.E.7 or I.E.8 you will be using browsers that the latest CCleaner is handling well. When using I.E.7 or I.E.8 the problem then becomes some difference between your computer system and the other computer systems that work well, and the situation will not be clouded by idiosyncrasies of obsolete browsers. Then meaningful comparisons can be made, and possibly a recent bug may be identified and fixed, in which case it could also improve your I.E.6 experience if you wish to revert. Alan

When you run Disk Cleanup it tells you how much is available to clean, in your case typically 143 KB IT ALSO TELLS YOU how much per sub-total under half a dozen categories which you can check/uncheck to enable/disable deleting. In addition as you select any of these categories it will give you a more comprehensive description of that category. In addition for several categories whilst selected you can click "View Files" and Explorer will be opened to show the corresponding region. These may help you setup the "Files to Include" section. Alan

It protects you from the wife seeing what porn sites you visited ! ! Mostly it is to protect your privacy from :- 1. Web-sites which you may visit, and which may be able to inspect cookies to see what you bought elsewhere etc. 2. others who have access to your computer. Malware can hide anywhere, depending upon how you define malware. Some cookie cleaners will spend over an hour examining all partitions on all drives in a computer as they inspect perhaps 100,000 objects (I only have 50,000 files) and select for quarantine only those which hold malware (which they define as privacy breaches where one web-site can read the cookies created by another.) CCleaner merely searches the standard locations where browsers commonly plant/read cookies, and regardless of what the cookie holds ( time of last vist, password, credit card no. ) that cookie will go if the relevant box is checked, or remain if you moved it to "cookies to keep" - and it takes very much much less than an hour to do so. Alan

My advice is withheld - offensive reactions to previous advice not acceptable Alan

If I wish to remove a file and it is locked, I will think twice about the wisdom of fighting Windows and Google for extra information upon this file. An automatic junk cleaner would be very slow if it took that much care. I consider the only valid reason for a tool to automatically delete locked files is when exterminating malware. Alan

It is difficult because you are all doing it all wrong ! ! wazz4444 Hold down the Ctrl key whilst you select cookie #20 DO NOT MOVE IT TO THE RIGHT Repeat above for keys #35, #36, etc. When you have chosen what you wish to move, ONLY THEN click the MOVE button, and all your choices will move, even if many of them are scattered above or below the section on display. overfloater Your problem is you are doing it one page at a time - you do not have to. I had zero cookies to keep, and 5 screen pages to save. I selected the top cookie and then scrolled to the bottom of the bottom page, then I held down Shift as I clicked on the bottom most cookie and all cookies were selected, then Move left and they all jumped across in a fraction of a second - leaving zero cookies to keep. I repeated the exercise in reverse and everything is back in the cookie to keep list. Alan

Alternatively, use a sledge hammer when all else fails ! ! I was unable to upgrade my software firewall - the installer said the old version had to be removed. Regedit was able to show me a registry tree of 2000 keys that it could not delete. It gave me no clues. I recognise a permissions error when I see one. Regedit required that I individually select a key and then it would either show me what it held or tell me NO. Only after trying 2000 keys, and upon getting a NO, would it allow me (in a blindfold) to take ownership, and then I could delete them. Life is too short ! ! I downloaded Registry Registrar Manager Lite (Free), pointed at the top of the tree, and 2 or 3 clicks later I owned 2000 keys, and 1 click later deleted them all and upgraded the firewall. You can download Registry Registrar Manager from http://www.resplendence.com/downloads WARNING - Meddling with the registry can do an awful lot of damage. I always have a fresh ERUNT backup created each morning just in case. Registry Registrar Manager is no more dangerous to an individual key than Regedit, BUT it will instantly obey and modify/damage all the keys you have selected. Regedit is less obliging and tends to restrict damage to one key at a time, so this is safer for a novice. Be careful Alan

You are forgiven ! ! I have added a shell extension myself which enables me to instantly use a file comparator on a pair of selected files. I am not concerned about how it is done, just about the dangers if the wrong thing happens. If I select a file and right click and use the keyboard to move down the list to "Create Shortcut" and then "Enter", it has been known for the display to be slow and to still be showing "Create Shortcut" after the O.S. has moved on to "Delete", so my "Enter" is not applied to my chosen option of "Create Shortcut", but a rather undesirable "Delete". On occasions when not using the keyboard but the mouse, it has sometimes twitched just as I did the right click, and the right click was not applied to what I was hovering over, but the next one up/down. An accidental delete is not a nice thing, but it does first pause to ask if I want it in the recycle bin. In my opinion an accidental WIPE or SHRED is a major disaster that should be prevented. If WIPE or SHRED is implemented then it should have strong password protection to ensure it is no accident. I will refuse to live with anything that enables a simple "Click and Go" to SHRED chunks of my computer. Alan

I have a default minimal cleanse version of CCleaner. I have launched and cancelled every check mark. I clicked the "Run Cleaner" button and it immediately took 0.001 seconds to say it had cleaned. I relaunched and with my normal defaults checked it took 5.731 Seconds to remove 0.16 MB. I am certain that if you are using a shortcut that includes the argument /AUTO it will run and having cleaned immediately close, and if it has nothing to clean (no junk to go, or no boxes checked) it will all happen in the blink of an eye. I suggest you first try Hazelnut's suggestion, and then consider totally removing CCleaner and then downloading and installing again. ( If you fail to uninstall and merely update/over-write you would probably inherit all blank boxes etc. again.) Alan

Ever since there was DOS I have used a P.C. Until 3 years ago every version of Windows would have a daily BSOD. Since then I have used XP and a BSOD is an annual occurrence. XP has the APPEARANCE of being much more reliable and safe. Experience and instincts suggest that M.S. were running out of engineers for telephone support, so XP was designed to stumble on as best it could, and to keep all errors and problems as inconspicuous as possible. I have halved the size of my C:\ by use of reparse points, and halved the time taken to create and archive a partition image backup file. All the stuff I relocated is not wasting any C.P.U. time, and is never involved in defragging, and is available should I need it. I am fairly certain that I can delete things such as $hf_mig$ and I386 etc. but I know that Murphy's Law sees all and knows all, and will immediately strike if I do ! ! Incidentally, I am currently suffering a delay between power on and Log in that varies between 30 and 60 seconds. Until last month it was consistently 20 to 25 Seconds. Something has gone wrong with a catalogue file - I am now investigating. I am confident whatever I need to fix it has been retained, and will be available when I know how to fix it. I am ultra cautious. I also have great respect for the bravery and assurance of those with an alternative approach to life. Alan