Alan_B

Jeffp I have no experience of a speed-up because I clean frequently. I would not be surprised by an improvement if I allowed a lot of junk to accumulate before cleaning. The above is in agreement with your findings, BUT - it does NOT work for other profiles. Because I often clean, my profile holds little junk, and the entire operating system has little junk. Other users rarely clean their profiles, but they still have the benefit of a junk free operating system. On the rare occasions that they do clean their profiles the ONLY effects on my profile are :- Properties of C:\ show a slight reduction in "Used Space" and corresponding increase in "Free space"; I have never noticed any effect upon speed. It is totally unreasonable for any profile to have its speed affected by hidden, private, inaccessible junk in other profiles. Unfortunately Windows has never been a reasonable animal, with many "gotchas" for the unwary, and NTFS gives it a smokescreen that makes things worse, therefore I am open to information upon the unexpected. Have you ever :- chosen a profile as "master"; measured the speed (1) for this master profile; cleaned this profile (plus operating system etc. etc.); and again measured the speed (2) for this master profile; and then gone to each of the other profiles and cleaned them; and then returned to the original "master" profile and measured the speed (3); And then compared speed(2) with (speed(3) ? I would not expect cleaning to make speed(2) slower than speed(1), and would hope it would make it faster. I have no favourable expectations because Windows so often dashes them on the harsh rocks of reality. I just accept that what happens is what happens. QUESTION - have you ever measured speed(3) as faster than speed(2) ? I would not expect any difference, but welcome advice. ANSWER to your question :- I use the portable build of CCleaner so its settings are not affected by the registry. An "All Users" short-cut on the desktop can run this in a clean and shut-down mode, and it will clean with a very safe non-aggressive CCleaner.INI :- all the profile junk that user has created; none of the system outside their profile. So long as they use this for "Shutdown" instead of the usual Windows Shutdown, then everyone, especially me, will have the benefit of extra free space. A separate folder with another instance of CCleaner has a far more aggressive CCleaner.INI. I personally use this to supervise the purging of all junk in my profile AND ALSO the whole system outside profiles. Sometime soon after dealing with other priorities I expect to :- use just one folder, not two (my first P.C. had a 20 MB HDD, so duplication of even 1 MB is offensive to me); alter the desk top short-cut to invoke a batch CMD script. This script will test whether "Alan" has launched it, or some-one else. It will then replace CCleaner.INI with a renamed copy of Aggresive.ini for my use, or Mild.ini for the others. If you would like to try this and report back, it would be very helpful. Otherwise when I have the time I will create, debug, and publish a workable batch file. To summarise, without any need for you to log into the other users profiles; you could simply install a CCleaner setup that does the shut-down for every user, and you can choose how mild or aggressive, and whether you want every-one to clean the whole system or only their own profile. If the family has an "Administrator" with higher interest/skills with the computer, you could additionally arrange a greater degree of aggression for that user, and perhaps remove "system" cleaning from the general users settings. That would quickly give a better speed for the profile you log in to, and all the other profiles will get better speed, and release more free space to every-one as each logins in and shuts-down. You do not have to be there for it to happen. Incidentally in addition to Mild.INI and Aggressive.INI, you might use Psychotic.INI to give a thorough spring-clean under your supervision, since you have the tools and skills to prevent/repair any damage. Regards Alan

Hi theunseen It would be difficult to have a fully tested and proven version of a cleaner within one day of a new Beta release. If you want a reliable cleanse of Windows 7 Beta I would suggest you format the drive, You might not like the results, but at least there should not be any surprises ! ! Alan

Why not use the Portable build CCleaner. Then a very simple batch command file could be invoked to :- 1. Make a spare copy of CCleaner.ini (but not to a temp folder ! ) 2. Launch CCleaner.exe and wait for it to close; 3. copy back the original CCleaner.ini to neutralise any changes. One desktop/startmenu shortcut for the batch experimental and cancel mode and another shortcut that directly invokes CCleaner in the normal fashion when changes are to be retained. Alternatively the batch command file could at stage 3 give you the option of whether or not to revert settings. Regards Alan

Brianoh Sorry my last response was too long for you to comprehend. The essential points are :- I accept that, as you say, "The Registry points to Java folders", BUT I do not fully agree. THAT ONLY applies to HKEY_USERS\S-1-5-21-...etc...-1008\Software\JavaSoft\ Your statement is false with respect to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\JavaSoft\ as it exists on my fully functional Java equipped system. Were CCleaner to be amended to suit your requirements I think it would damage the Auto-Update facility for Java. As it happens, I prefer to minimise any sort of auto-update, I like to stay in control, but I DEMAND that this suppression (or enablement) of auto-update should REMAIN under my control, and that I should not be usurped by "helpful" software. Regards Alan

The good news that Recuva was able to restore your file is overshadowed by the terrible news it needed the processor to run at 15% of nominal speed. This rules out any possibility that the original shut down was due to a fatal exception error when Recuva stumbled over an unexpected complication. This leaves open the probability that something is wrong with your computer system, and every time you do anything more demanding than reading emails you could have further catastrophic shut downs which may progressively corrupt more and more of your files. Have a look in your Event Viewer, especially System Events. Things like "ftdisk error - data may have been lost" give me great anxiety. Since you had a need for Recuva, you obviously lack an adequate backup regime. Far more urgently, and also not involving the need to buy external drives and backup software, you really ought to check (and improve) the health of your System. Perhaps next week it will only sustain 5% of nominal speed. I think you need urgent expert advice. I am not an expert in such matters. My special skill is recognising the need for an expert ! ! Regards Alan

Brianoh I too am no expert on the registry. I have however noticed that CCleaner will delete empty keys that contain no values. On my fully functional system HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\JavaSoft\ contains nothing at all to designate any programme, it only has subkeys which contain flags denoting (as I interpret their names) whether updates are allowed and how often, but no clues where any updates are to go. If your desired rules were implemented, CCleaner would probably neutralise any auto-update. If you could see anything in your HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\JavaSoft\ that designated where an executable should be, your system is unlike my XP Home edition with SP3, and I would suspect that something was corrupted. If CCleaner zapped registry keys just because of a little corruption, it MIGHT improve user experience on occasions, but I (and many cautious people) would far rather tolerate any slight degradation in boot start-up time than lose something resulting in an un-bootable system. Therefore we would prefer to make daily use of a SAFE registry cleaner and switch to more dangerous techniques only when essential. Please note that there are many more dangerous Registry Cleaners available for you to use. They MIGHT have solved your problem. BUT sometimes NOTHING can cure the registry for you. I was once unable to upgrade my software firewall, and the ONLY cure (apart from re-installing Windows) was to use a special registry EDITOR to "take ownership" of a Comodo registry key BEFORE I could delete it, after which the upgrade proceeded sweetly. Please note that I download a special registry editor which hammered at the registry until it was done, and after I gave 3 or 4 clicks it erased Comodo's main key and all its 1000's of subkeys. I subsequently found I could have deleted them with RegEdit, but only by special actions of "taking ownership" of a child key without being allowed to see what the correct owner was that did not want me to get inside nor even see what was inside the key. Doing this for all the child keys, and then doing the same for the grandchildren keys, and then after I owned all the keys. Then RegEdit allowed by to delete all the great-grandchildren keys one at a time, and only after they had gone could I delete their parents. I found the technique with Regedit, but not the patience. If I had not found the superior registry editor I would have been stuck with an obsolete firewall. I am absolutely convinced that no registry cleaner would have been able to purge those keys for me. I did find some which used reg.exe or some-such to instruct Windows to delete those keys, BUT they did not receive (or did not listen to) an error status that the key was inaccessible and frozen - they just assumed that because they said GO it had gone away. If I had found a super registry cleaner, I would never have made daily use of it - I would have kept in a password locked folder to absolutely prevent accidental use. Regards Alan

1. Look at http://forum.piriform.com/index.php?showtopic=8600 It is POSSIBLE that when you reach 7% something special happens, and just possibly the Recuva diagnostics MIGHT give a valuable clue. 2. Google for Fujitsu Siemens Amilo "user forum" You may get technical advice upon overheating from their user forums, or even Fujitsu Technical Support. 3. Search for "Temperature" Searching on this Piriform site gave me 25 hits before I posted this reply. You will find reference to Speedfan which will show you various temperatures. There may be other freeware programs also recommended. Then if you have the energy, search for "Temperature" on Google ! ! Regards Alan

It seemed obvious to me you admitted to a mistake ! You thought you deleted Java, after which you realised "In fact, I think I had not deleted Java at all." Is it really beyond the bounds of possibility that you might have also overlooked some other item that had been left over from the old Java ? Many Java Registry keys contain data which designate Java executables in the Java Program Folders, and I would not expect CCleaner to purge those keys until the Java executables have gone. My system has had the benefit of Javara, so ancient garbage went a long time ago. Is it possible you had some ancient Java executable garbage buried in an unexpected folder, possibly even outside of C:\Program Files ? It is not obvious to me how to determine whether there is any need to retain the specific registry keys HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\JavaSoft\Java Update\Policy and HKEY_USERS\S-1-5-21-...etc...-1008\Software\JavaSoft\Java Runtime Environment\1.6.0_10-rc Those keys are not empty, BUT none of the data designates an executable whose presence could be detected. Please illuminate me :- How should CCleaner know whether those keys are obsolete if they contain nothing whose validity can be tested to determine whether the relevant item had been uninstalled ? Would it involve public knowledge of rigidly enforced rules upon the use of the registry ? Or would it need detailed understanding of the source code of Java, plus confidence that SUN will never change the rules ? Regards Alan

You could download the "portable" build, and unzip it to several folders, and create separate short-cuts to each. Then you run one instance of CCleaner and set mild cleansing, which is preserved within its CCleaner.ini (not the registry) when you close CCleaner. Then run another instance and set aggressive cleansing. Then instead of running always the same instance, you just run whichever flavour you need at the time. When a new version of CCleaner is launched, I always unzip it into yet another folder, and copy the old CCleaner.INI to the new folder so it automatically has all my old settings. Then with a dirty system that needs cleaning I use each, the old and the new, to ANALYSE only without cleaning. If both the old and the new give different analysis results I will worry, but that has not yet happened - perhaps I am not adventurous enough ! ! Regards Alan

Wireless Routers/Firewalls are vulnerable, especially if the Wireless link is not encrypted adequately. WEP is not adequate. Also WAP is not adequate according to http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/security/?p=708 I use WAP2 so I have no fear - yet ! ! When WAP2 is broken then a neighbour MIGHT steal some of the bandwidth supplied by by ISP. I assume my hardware firewall "protects" my computer only from malware delivered by my ISP, and any wireless hack could enter my computer direct via the wireless without the hardware firewall being aware of it. This is yet another reason for continuing to use a software firewall that protects both my Ethernet and wireless connections. Regards Alan

I think it was a mistake to remove the previous version of Java. A few days ago I read that Sun have at last recognised that no-one wants their old rubbish clogging up the system, and as of version 6u11 they now clean the ancient rubbish. Obviously when you removed the old version, their new version could not identify what needed to be removed, it just knew the registry was telling it that Java already existed - hence installation failed. I would guess that CCleaner is very correct in NOT removing the registry keys if it considers Java to still be present, and OFTEN when Add/Remove is used to remove an installation it leaves a few stragglers behind in the registry and in Program Files and in Documents and Settings. CCleaner registry cleaning would be far more "interesting" if it zapped the registry keys of any application that was less than 100% complete. Regards Alan

I am aware of the ability to launch CCleaner from either a DOS command prompt or a batch script. I do not know if it can perform as you wish. I think it unlikely - there have to be better ways. Why not issue the DOS command "DEL c:/temp/*.*" Regards Alan

If you create a print file but leave it pending, and then run CCleaner, after that the file could have gone. Unless you are running CCleaner whilst you are simultaneously printing, I do not see how CCleaner could be responsible for deleting the print file whilst it is being created. If you have seen the file being created and immediately lost / deleted, perhaps :- 1. The printer drivers have read all the data "instantly" and signalled completion without actually putting ink to paper; 2. Something strange happened to the registry. Possibly causes might be a Windows security patch, or cleaning the registry. I always protect myself by having Windows update totally disabled until every-one else has had a few days to complain if the latest security patches cause problems, and then before enabling the update I archive a disc image ready for an instant restoration should I wish. Additionally, I never clean the registry without first agonising over the possible consequences of each item, and only then do I clean with the backup option selected. Regards Alan

In some situations the operating system may fail to understand something like C:\Program Files\NewTech Infosystems\NTI CD & DVD-Maker 7\Default HKLM\etcetcetc In which case it is worth trying with quotes, e.g. "C:\Program Files\NewTech Infosystems\NTI CD & DVD-Maker 7\Default HKLM\etcetcetc" The two possibilities are :- C:\Program Files\NewTech Infosystems\NTI CD & DVD-Maker 7\Default HKLM\etcetcetc "C:\Program Files\NewTech Infosystems\NTI CD & DVD-Maker 7\Default HKLM\etcetcetc" Regards Alan

A Comodo software firewall protects me. Recently a Netgear Wireless Router / Modem was added. This gives a better connection speed than the Speedtouch modem I previously used. Netgear is set to allow "outgoing only", but I was amazed at the incoming it also allowed which should have been blocked. I have a dynamic IP address, so some days I inherit what was used by a more social animal, and the Comodo logs would show many incoming attempts from his Peer to Peer and Bit Torrent friends trying to resume yesterday's experiences. Far less often, I would get hit by a trojan army - perhaps 50 incoming attempts from different IP addresses within 0.2 Seconds, and repeated at 5 second intervals with a totally different set of IP addresses. Both old Comodo 2 and new Comodo 3 blocked perfectly, but old Comodo 2 would take a high percentage of the CPU cycles unless I disabled logging - it was actually simpler to disconnect and reconnect to the ISP and my old IP address became some-one else's problem Netgear removes much BUT NOT ALL of the burden of the above from the software firewall (and the CPU cycles), so I still NEED the software firewall for maximum security. I have lost count of the number of software packages I downloaded trouble free (before and after the Netgear addition). The first Netgear Router software upgrade was no trouble at all. The second Netgear Wireless adapter upgrade just would not happen. I inspected the Comodo log and found it totally blocked an INCOMING from the Netgear web-site. I had to tell Comodo to permit INCOMING for that particular web-site, and then I got the upgrade. The problem is that hardware firewalls assume that if you make an outgoing connection to an IP address, then they should not only accept replies to your connection, they also accept anything else (including malware) which that IP address decides to stuff down your throat. I have just downloaded CCleaner ccsetup215.exe Comodo shows that a TCP Out transaction from my port 1438 to Piriform 72.21.207.132:80 sent 872 bytes out, and received 3.1 MBytes in as a reply to the same port. Every time I download anything from anywhere, I can receive megabytes coming in as a reply to the port from which I sent a fist full of bytes to make the request. Because Windows gave Firefox an unused port (e.g. 1438) any incoming packets go direct to Firefox to handle the download, and Comodo (and also Netgear) accept this as as a reply on an outgoing connection. That always happens with whatever port happens to be allocated by Windows. The only download problem was the Netgear Wireless upgrade. I sent the fist full of bytes from port e.g. 2345, and Netgear web site tried to stuff the update down my port 2346. I don't know the details of FTP, but I guess that is what they aimed for. The netgear firewall permitted this in-appropriate download aimed at a port which had NOT been allocated to Firefox, but fortunately Comodo blocked it. I am really glad that Comodo blocked it. I had the minor inconvenience of a delay investigating and then altering a firewall rule - but I also got peace of mind. Had Comodo NOT been present, then Netgear would have allowed uncontrollable stuff into a port over which my legitimate applications had no control. The consequences could have been :- illegitimate malware could have first acquired that port (2346) and now been waiting for this damaging payload; Windows might have taken "default" action over incoming to an unallocated port, and the default with a "privileged port" is to allow a total stranger to take over your computer ! ! Netgear not only allows incoming packets to the wrong port, it allows the wrong protocol also. Netgear blocks ICMP which includes Echo Requests - mostly. I found that some internet speed test sites send echo requests to me, and Netgear allows them through, and only Comodo stops them (I have to set specific permissions for the sites to which I wish to echo). Some web sites will respond to a Ping, which helps strangers observe internet delays etc. Other web-sites do NOT because a computer can be infected by specially crafted ICMP messages. I wish to be like a secure internet banking web-site, and have Comodo block unwanted ICMP messages. A few weeks ago M.S. revealed an exploit that had been in the wild for several months, and the last "out-of-cycle" security patch has mitigated the danger. I believe an "SQL Injection Attack" could compromise a web-site so that visitors could be infected. I do not know the details, but I assume that when that danger exists :- Hardware Firewall will NOT protect when visiting an infected web-site; Software Firewall WILL protect from an infected web-site (unless it is a reply with the same protocol to the same port number). I believe :- The Netgear Router/Firewall/Modem gives me better speed on the Internet, but does not block anything which would not be blocked by the software firewall; My (software) firewall protection fends off any infection from unintentional connections/downloads. Any download containing malware that I may be tricked or re-directed to will get through the firewalls. Once downloaded malware is initiated, my anti-virus should inspect and detect and block before it gets into the system. If malware gets through, I have lost control (what little control Windows allows a humble administrator ! ), and :- Hardware can do nothing for me - it cannot distinguish Firefox or a new keylogger/trojan making an outgoing connection; Software knows if any application is authorised to make a connection, and if not will block it; so even if malware has stolen my identity and credit card numbers, it cannot "phone home" with my details. (In addition, Comodo does not only stop bad stuff in both directions, but also will block a keylogger etc. from merely gathering information - long before the keylogger tries to phone home.) I feel I am better protected by having a software firewall. I am not complacent, so remain alert to any unexpected changes in how my system behaves. I fear I could be at greater risk from a Security patch impairing the system or making it unbootable, which is why I always wait a day or two after Patch Tuesday to see if there are any casualties, and then before unleashing the patch I create a fresh disk image just in-case. The last time I had a virus was before the internet, when my younger son would get home from school before I left work, and he had copied from his friends more games onto a box of 5.25 inch floppy discs. Every other weekend I had to re-install DOS 3.13. Been there, done that, not doing it again ! ! Perpetually Paranoid Alan

I think you have not understood the situation. CCleaner does NOT preserve "cookies to delete list" anywhere; It CREATES a list of cookies that are accumulated and maintained by your browsers. You would have to aim revo-uninstaller etc. at all your browsers for CCleaner to find zero to delete, and if it found a non-zero quantity then one of your browsers created a cookie which defeated revo-installer. CCleaner does not control the cookies in the "cookies to delete list" - it merely reports what it finds depending upon which options you have checked. CCleaner DOES preserve the "cookies to keep" list; and the fact that you had to go through the "cookies to delete list" to re-instate what you wanted to keep shows that you had purged everything which CCleaner and stored. You actually wasted a lot of time and effort. I always go for the "portable" build and create a new folder into which to unzip it. This gives me a brand new start. Then I copy CCleaner.ini from the previous folder, and the next time I use the new version it has all my previous adjustments. No nonsense with the registry. Immediate ability to run the OLD version to compare and see what is new and to even analyse (without cleaning) and count the number of bytes/files which each version can deal with. Regards Alan

I almost ALWAYS has a temporary freeze at 100% completion of a download from many sources. Windows Task manager process tab shows me why. My anti-virus has taken over and is scrutinising what I got before it lets me (or Windows) have it. You need to launch Task Manager and click on the CPU column BEFORE the download, then when you freeze at 100% completion you can see what is taking all the CPU cycles. Another possibility is that your THREE computers COULD be fed from ONE common hardware router/firewall, in which case perhaps that has decided to block the last percent. Or maybe your I.S.P. is blocking. So many possibilities. So little information upon your computers and security configurations. Alan

Thanks Davey. IS IT SAFE ? i.e. What is the default in the absence of a prompt and user decision, is a backup created automatically, or does CCleaner refrain from creating what is "hopefully" never going to be needed ? After upgrading yesterday I noticed a new pop-up during file analysis warning that Firefox needed to be closed before its cache could be cleansed. Then I found the back-up pop-up prompt missing, and I thought CCleaner had changed its pop-up technology and it was all to much for some malicious pop-up suppression on my system - or perhaps my code download was defective. I came today to do another download and try again. Glad I stopped off at the forum first. Regards Alan

For a little sadistic pleasure, get on the mailing list for "Giveaway of the Day". When they give a registry cleaner I always visit at the end of the day. The daily forum usually starts with questions about how to install/register the product. By the end of the day there are usually several who desperately need help mending their systems, because they believed the computer when it said "trust me - I know what I am doing". I am so glad that CCleaner is at the opposite end of the spectrum. Regards Alan

"and allow select all (Control-A) and copy (Control-C) to work so the file list can be copied into other program" No you cannot Control-A. But you can select the top left corner, and drag down to the bottom right, then it is ready for copy (Control-C). OR you simply right click on the list and it lets you choose the file name and folder for it to give you a list file. Meanwhile I wait patiently for column selections. I rate the most important requirement (because I think I might see it in my life time) is a very simple change of sequence. The SIZE should be the first item, not the last. I get quite dizzy zigzagging along the right hand end looking to see if any unexpected Gigabyte files are about to need a Recuva retrieval ! ! Regards Alan

Hi You cannot attach "dangerous" files. Most forums list what can be sent, but I find no clues here. This site VERY clearly objects to any *.exe" file. What were YOU trying to attach ? You may be lucky with a *.zip Alan

Hi I have VERY limited experience of Recuva, BUT, I doubt that ANY file recovery program will succeed in running under an operating system which cannot tell if the drive is un-formatted, or is formatted in one of the wonderful UNIX flavours. I think you should be looking for advice upon getting access to the drive. Once you can read the files that have NOT been deleted, THEN you can start hunting for what has been deleted. There are probably forums dedicated to doing whatever it is that flash drives need doing to them. At the end of the day, try joining the C.I.A. - you might be able to sneak your flash drive in for a detailed magnetic domain analysis ! ! Regards Alan

You are so right - I got it wrong. I typed the same solution as you, but chickened out. There are options I have only checked for experimental ANALYSIS, but never had the courage to CLEAN. So I decided not to push a newcomer over the edge. I decided that the "computer customer care experts" did stuff that MIGHT have removed something that should have stayed, and I would not do further damage if I avoided checking anything not yet checked. So I reversed my solution, getting the hedge funds in the search window and cleaning with one of the options cancelled and repeating until the hedge funds survived, and that last cancelled option is the one. Unfortunately whilst editing to reverse my procedure, I was called away for a meal, and then after further distractions I failed to complete the edit reversal. Sorry for the confusion. Regards Alan

Get "Hedge Funds" in the search window; Launch CCleaner; Then repeat :- UNcheck one of the options. Run CCleaner Look at search Window Repeat until "Hedge Funds" has gone. When "Hedge Funds" has gone, you have just unchecked the option that clears it. Regards Alan

Hi I Ran Recuva.exe v1.21.0.373, Found 0 files in (NTFS) D:\. Closed (top right corner - Red "X"). Task Manager shows residual recuva.exe process using 9,816K; Peak was 10,152K Ran Recuva.exe v1.21.0.373, Found 0 files in NTFS D:\. Closed (top right corner - Red "X"). Additional residual recuva.exe process using 9,772K; Peak was 10,116K Ran Recuva.exe v1.21.0.373, Reached "In a specific Location" Clicked "Browse" and got egg timer, eventually "Recuva Wizard (Not Responding)" Clicked Close (Top right corner). New Window "End Program - Piriform Recuva" Still got 3 off recuva.exe processes resident in memory. Hit "End Now" Last Process reached about 10,???K; peak 10,???K, then disappeared when invitation presented to "...Tell Microsoft..." Event Viewer now reported error. Within "...Tell Microsoft..." I clicked "Don't Send" but dumpreg and dwwin appeared briefly, and then disappeared. Still got Recuva.exe processes 9,816K; Peak was 10,152K and 9,772K; Peak was 10,116K The Event Viewer / Application error was :- Event Type: Error Event Source: Application Hang Event Category: (101) Event ID: 1002 Date: 25/12/2008 Time: 21:41:13 User: N/A Computer: ACER-311VPBCEH0 Description: Hanging application Recuva.exe, version 1.21.0.373, hang module hungapp, version 0.0.0.0, hang address 0x00000000. For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp. Data: 0000: 41 70 70 6c 69 63 61 74 Applicat 0008: 69 6f 6e 20 48 61 6e 67 ion Hang 0010: 20 20 52 65 63 75 76 61 Recuva 0018: 2e 65 78 65 20 31 2e 32 .exe 1.2 0020: 31 2e 30 2e 33 37 33 20 1.0.373 0028: 69 6e 20 68 75 6e 67 61 in hunga 0030: 70 70 20 30 2e 30 2e 30 pp 0.0.0 0038: 2e 30 20 61 74 20 6f 66 .0 at of 0040: 66 73 65 74 20 30 30 30 fset 000 0048: 30 30 30 30 30 00000 The above happened with a 1 day old internal disc drive. When I tried to recuva from ANCIENT (FAT32) I:\Backups on External USB Hard Drive it found 122 deleted files, none of which I wanted so I closed Recuva. This left Recuva.exe process resident with about 270 MBytes in use; 460 MBytes Peak. Upon either the second or third attempt this also locked up when I tried to Browse, and a similar Hanging application error report occurred. At this stage Task Manager => Performance => Commit Charge :- Total = 209124, Limit = 1514196, Peak 692904 I have seen much heavier usage which never caused a crash or failure. With both D:\ and I:\Backups it appears that the lockup occurs during the :- second attempt if I click rapidly; third attempt if I methodically record every consequence before making the next click. I am using XP Home Edition with SP3, and the Portable build Recuva unzipped into D:\. n.b. every residual instance of Recuva.exe must be terminated by Task Manager, otherwise there is a hang-up problem upon shut-down / reboot. ALSO if each residual process is terminated, and nothing is left visible, Recuva still does not run at all until a reboot. Regards Alan