mr don

Much respect, but would also save a lot of resizing & headaches when using CCleaner portably on many diff screen sizes/resolutions...

Why would anyone need it to check if it is the most up-to-date when they just downloaded & are installing the most up-to-date? Why is Defraggler the only one that does this, IE, CCleaner, Recuva, Speccy never bug you like this! Additionally, it doesn't just check for updates. It also sets it to check for updates in the .ini file? Why not just NOT check for updates like the other installers? Having an update checker just wastes my bandwidth! Update checks should be optional, not mandatory! I fully know that every month there is a new version, & I prefer downloading manually rather than having something check for updates every time I launch it!

Or, a hotfix. I personally have seen software that worked fine, suddenly quite working after a hotfix was applied. In other cases, it would work, but only to a certain percentage, say, like 20% or 80% before exiting out. The reason, is because certain hotfixes change the way the OS operates, as "loopholes" are "closed". This occasionally interferes with the normal operation of certain programs, depending on what kind of "loophole" or activity they restrict/lock-down. Of course, I mean this kind of comically, because to date, MS has never been able to produce a fully secured & unhackable system (as evidenced by the contests sponsored to see how long an OS stood before being compromised). In many cases, it was merely minutes, or sometimes seconds before being compromised. Sometimes, if a hotfix causes the problem, there are only 3 things you can do: - Uninstall the hotfix causing the problem - Revert to an older version of defraggler... Perhaps it will work? - Wait for the newer, updated version of Defraggler...

Easiest way to do this is to install CCleaner on your computer. Run CCleaner & change the settings like you want it, being sure to select save settings to .ini (under advanced options) before closing CCleaner. Drop CCleaner.exe & the .ini file for settings onto your flash drive. Use your flash drive to run CCleaner, then shut down CCleaner & remove the drive.

The purpose of closing Firefox, is to release any temp files that are in use. Attempting to invent a CCleaner that cleaned while Firefox was open would be foolish.

On Defraggler, I have given up. The installer never stops checking for updates after you install it. Even if you uncheck it on the installer, it still ignores it & checks no matter if you uncheck or check it. > Additionally, on certain machines, it will refuse to set a schedule. Cannot change properties or whatever, even after running as admin...

It is possible that this is due to Windows 7 changing the default cluster size given to files, causing files who overlap a cluster to have trouble being recovered. They may have to update this to work properly for Windows 7.

No, no, no!!! CCleaner is meant to delete trash, not preserve it! IF you want trash, don't use CCleaner. Preserving trash will only add complexity to really deleting it, & turn CCleaner form a good app to a confusing & bloated app that IS trash in itself!

I have worked with CCleaner a while, & there are 3 areas that would really make things easier for me & others if these were improved. - Add the option to right click a startup item & go to file location. Too frequently, some item named @37482097 (you get the picture!) is difficult to guess it it is really malware/normal startup items related to intel update checker/hp software etc... It would really help being able to tell what the file is, so having a way to right click/go to file location would be very helpful! > Startup Items: Lately, there have been a number of impossible to get rid of startup items. At least, using CCleaner. The reason is that CCleaner only checks normal startup item locations. But BHO & Tasks startup items are ignored & allowed to load forever. This machine I just checked has an internet offers set as a task & to always run on reboot. Very, very, very annoying. I would love to see CCleaner check for these items under startup as well: - BHO (Browser Helper Object) - Tasks (Running tasks) Please give us the ability to disable/delete BHO & Tasks! Tasks folder has started to be the new startup annoyance on computers! Now, the new startup items are mostly BHO related or Tasks related. Many people frantically check their regular startup items without realizing that BHO & Tasks are 2 other startup items they forget to check... It may be easier if startup is broken into 3 key areas. BHO/Startup/Tasks... If you can give us this, it will make things soooo much simpler for me & lots of others! Thank you! > If you like these suggestions, please feel free to add your support or criticism below. Would love to know what you think!

Which of these did you do? If you are using a 10 or 20 year old harddisk, expect performance to slow to a crawl. Your modern harddisks are many times faster in reading & writing data. I know. I have used a lot of older drives vs newer drives & tested performance. I have seen some older drives struggle with data that newer ones flew through. Your drive seems small/older. Why not upgrade to a newer 7,200 RPMM drive for better performance? P.S. If you are sneaky about the upgrade & get it as an external harddrive, you can take the harddrive from the USB enclosure, then put your desktop harddrive in & use it for backup purposes! Just be sure to get the right harddrive, as some enclosures use the laptop 2.5 in drive, while some use the 3.5 in drive. Additionally, be sure you select the right drive, as newer ones use Sata a lot, while yours will be IDE or PATA. Try Tiger Direct to see if they have the older drive if you need to! Remember, 7,200 RPM drives are 2X faster than 5,400 ones. This can alleviate the burden on your CPU somewhat as the CPU does have to wait for data response from a harddisk. This way, no drive ends up "unused" & you killed 2 birds with 1 stone. Newer, faster drive, with a backup drive to boot!

There are 4 softwares that may help you additionally: - Bart Dart's Context Menu cleaner (google it, it's free) - Abelha Digital's Hosts Manager (also free) - Nir Sofer's Startup Run (also free, but they have a newer prog now. Just use this one instead, because it lets you delete startup AND BHO - End it All 2 (also free... they have a version 1, but 2 does much better. Hard to find now, but still around on some sites as an archived program. If you are looking something to free mem before defrag, check out End it ALL 2, because it will end all the running processes that it is able to, so that you have max mem available. It is different from a clear mem program, because it actually kills processes off. A simple reboot lets them all come back.

I agree. "Classic" skin would be nice!

While the speed of your CPU is unknown, I can see that you are running: - XP under classic mode - Have a single core processor - Have 265 used mb out of 1,057 - Have a reported 7.2 Gb drive that 7.1 Gb (99%) is used Here are some things that could be slowing your system down. - How much physical ram do you have, as opposed to virtual? You will be running slower than you need to be on anything less than 512 mb ram under XP. I have 2 GB under mine since I use a lot of programs & need that mem. If you have less than 512 mb ram, upgrade that please! - How fast is your CPU? Computers with celeron processors are naturally slower than P4 in processing, & if you have a p2 350 or so, I would say that is quite old & not the fault of piriform developers or XP. - Harddrive on the one you highlighted as the problem area is mostly used. This leaves very, very, very little space for defraggler to defrag. It does need space to move things around. Perhaps delete restore points or turn off sys restore under system properties for that drive? Get clear room for defraggler, & try to leave at least 10% to 15% free so it can defrag properly? * Your harddisk is an older drive, so you should update to a larger & faster drive. You don't really need a 2 tb drive, so if you get an 80 to 120 gb drive, that will work a lot better than what you have now, & can be had pretty cheap. 7,200 rpm drives are 2 times faster than 5,400 rpm drives. 15,000 rpm drives are insane, but too expensive. You will want the 7,200 rpm drive. * Check on a video card. ATI has the most compatible at the moment, & can increase computer speed substantially, especially rendering 2D/3D objects. Older computers benefit even more. Find out if your computer supports AGP video as opposed to PCI, because AGP is meant for dedicated video & is much faster. 1x AGP is 2 times faster than PCI. A lot of systems have at least 4 x AGP, so this would make it 8 times faster. Some may have 16x AGP, but your system won't have that. Try for a minimum of 128 mb video card ram. * If you have to, just get a USB 2 card ($19 - $29) & plug into an empty PCI slot, then get an external USB harddisk to copy all your files over to. Get a drive that is 120 GB or less, or partition your harddisk into 125 GB partitions if it is far bigger, because XP can experience corruption of data if you fill a drive over the 137 GB limit (unless you have SP1 or higher, SP2 recommended because SP3 has various bugs & flaws with it) & perhaps a bios that supports 48 bits, & the large drive enabler for the registry patch. * If you have an older PC, turning on updates will slow your system over time to a crawl. This is repeatable time & again. It causes crashes sometimes because of driver incompatibility problems or untested feature/flaws. It has happened that a single MS update caused an entire room of 200 computers to crash before & blue screen on bootup. MS later remedied this, but it still illustrates the fact that your system can be compromised/slow down/become less usable over time if updates are left on. * To avoid as much malware infection, recommended to use a browser like Firefox as opposed to IE. Check your system for malware with malwarebytes & updated defs to see if that is causing a prob. * Delete unnecessary items on startup. Generally you only need your antivirus + maybe yahoo or something loading. Everything that loads takes mem & slows it down. * Delete BHO items. They can be as pernicious as malware, or benign, but they still load with windows. * Switch to a different AV. AVG does about as good as any, & is free + much lighter on system resources than the mem & processor hog Norton & McAfee. * Run CCleaner to clear un-needed trash. * If you had your comp a long time, go to CCleaner reg cleaner, untick the top 3 entries (the 3 that give the most problems), then click scan, fix, & let it back up the items before fixing. * Under system properties, check the appearance, set for speed, then recheck the one for the icon drop shadows & smooth edges of screen fonts, then hit ok. * Uninstall all programs you never ever use. * Check for newer versions of your drivers, & be sure your chipset drivers are installed (if needed). * Under device manager, check your IDE controllers to be sure they are running in DMA 5 instead of PIO (compatibility, or very very slow mode as opposed to the much faster DMA 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, & 6). Hardisks usually run about DMA 5 or 6 while CD/DVD are a lot of times DMA 2 or so. If it is PIO, right click, uninstall, reboot & redetect drivers, reboot again for settigs to take place. Check DMA again. If still PIO, check for updated chipset drivers to fix it, or a bios update. There are other things as well, but I am sleepy. Hope this helps!

CCleaner remembers user settings in the .ini file, however, when using other computers, CCleaner can be off the screen, on the screen, all over the screen in who knows what corner, depending on what the screensize or resolution is. For example: Suppose you open CCleaner on a 1600 X 1200 res monitor. Now, open that same program from your flash drive on an 800 X 600 monitor on another comp. Yep, have to resize it (again?) Would love if auto-center can be added, whereupon checked in settings, it will remember to auto-center via .ini file, & from now on, always auto-center on whatever screen it appears on. Actually, I would love having this on every Piriform product. Definitely save me a lot of clicks! What do you all think?

I pitted the oldest version of Defraggler (1.0.31 Beta) against the newest version (1.20.201). I have a P4 dual core 3.2 GHZ machine with a 7,200 RPM harddisk & 2 GB mem. I timed how long it took the first iteration of Defraggler to analyze the drive, & it was 25 seconds for the first analyze. The latest version of Defraggler, by contrast, took 3 seconds or less to analyze the drive. Using MS Calc, I was able to divide 25 seconds by 3 to arrive at the realization that 1.0.31 Beta was 8.33 times slower (at least) than 1.20.201 in analyzing. I can only assume that it is likewise with other operations. Conclusion... The latest absolutely TROUNCES the earliest! Interesting? Leave a note to tell me your thoughts!

Yes, it is. You have no idea how many computers are traded that used to be connected to the internet, or have had the internet, then it was turned off, etc.

You can always disable updates, by going into the program, yes, but it is confusing for the installer to let you "not check for updates", then have it check for updates anyway, totally disregarding your choice for it not to! If I uncheck the check for updates box, I would think that it would be only logical for it not to check for updates after I finish. There is always the check for updates link built in, & I don't need it to check when I just downloaded what I know to be the latest version! I know that CCleaner doesn't check for updates after you install, so I was wondering why Defraggler still would, even after unchecking it on install?

I agree with both of you. Save the installer settings. Additionally, a deselect all checkmark box would be nice!

Maybe Recuva cannot recover 1 pass. But I know data recovery tools that CAN recover 1 pass. More wipes is definitely more secure. It makes it much, much, much harder to recover, & does not take that much longer. You want to be sure it is gone, you better do it more than 1 time, more than 2 times, at least 3 or more.

You will always kill off write cycles on a drive by wiping it. If you have critical data to get rid of, by all means, wipe it, unless you would rather they recover it & get you in trouble!

I tried the 6ish versions of Eraser, & they wanted to install .Net 3.5, in addition to finishing with errors, not completely erasing a drive. CCleaner ran perfectly. + 1 for CCleaner working, & working with ease. Still think wipe free space should be as a tool, but it works good!

I agree, I am routinely annoyed by having to uncheck 5 checkboxes. But it isn't just 5. Every time I do an install for someone who doesn't have 5, it keeps adding up. 5, then 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, new ccleaner update, 5 more, etc. Seems to be no end to the clicks! I would be glad for the 1 box unchecks it all. I know what he is saying!

Newbie, the SP3 is free. MS does do a product activation, but you don't have to use that. If you google SP3 download, there are sites that do have SP3 that have already passed the check, so all you have to do is download from them. The download from MS is free, so all you have to do is find someone that has already passed the check & download it from them. Since you are a SP2 user, you can always try the update to SP3 & see if that does or doesn't fix the problem. In addition, if you know when the problem occurred firstly, you can try one of a number of other fixes. Try System Restoring to the time when you know it last worked. Try uninstalling SP2 (if it is not integrated) & see if it works then, then if it does, re-upgrade to SP2. Try Upgrading your Defraggler to the last version (1.19, as opposed to your 1.18) to see if it works. Try the quick defrag, or even the file based defrag (instead of full defrag) as sometimes this works. Try downgrading Defraggler to a very early version from filehippo to see if it works with any of those. Try something like auslogics defrag, or iobit defrag as they sometimes work if defraggler doesn't. Additionally, sometimes malware can interfere with running your system properly. - Using nirsoft Startup Run, check your startup & BHO items. Eliminate all of them you do not need. Typically, you keep the ones responsible for graphics/audio/Antivirus/Yahoo. It is safe, however, to disable the ones for audio/video where it says tray in the line, as these are the startup items that load an additional tray icon (not necessary since windows already has audio/video controls). - Using abelha digital's hostsman, check your hosts file to be sure it does not contain re-directors or hijackers. Typically, you only want the windows loopback IP, as other entries can either be malware blockers (as Spybot Search & Destroy ads entries) or they can even be used by malware for redirects & have a block list that blocks good software such as AVG, Symantec, McAffee, etc. In any case, they are safe to remove. Maintaining a hosts based block list is nearly ineffective due to the millions of malware available, & you would have to have a block list for all of them. I usually keep no entries except windows loopback (for performance reasons as well). - Scan your system with Malwarebytes + updated definitions (full system scan) & remove what it finds. Do the same with Super Antispyware, then Spybot Search & destroy. - Check the antivirus you are using. If it is older, say a 2006 based version of symantec, check what version it is. An update or a switch to a newer free one such as AVG may be recommended. But be careful. Symantec is notorious for leaving lots of registry clutter after their uninstaller, which may halt AVG from updating to run. It can be removed, but if you do not know what you are doing, careful here. Whatever AV you have, be sure you only have one of them installed because 2 or more can cause problems. Be sure the definitions are up to date & scan with them. - Using Hi-Jack this, carefully check the items that load with windows startup. - Use a browser other than IE, such as Firefox that is much more stable & has fewer security exploits. This alone prevents the "driveby download" style of malware from installing. - Run CCleaner with the wipe free space option so that it can zero out the unused sections of your harddisk. This may also help with sectors that are hard to read. - In some cases, rootkits can cause redirects on any browser you use. Combofix is a good free utility that can usually find & repair activity such as this. Recommend making a restore point before using, just to be on the safe side. - If all else fails, & you have your XP disk with you, backup all your pics, vids, games, prog etc that you need to another location, either a secondary partition or an external drive. Using Double Driver + Driver Magician Lite, backup your system drivers. I listed 2, because I have had numerous occasions that one driver backup util would miss a part of a video driver that the other would catch, so I could switch folders & continue the install. Then, after a system backup, delete your old partition when the screen comes up, create a new NTFS one, then format it & install windows. Recommended to skip the quick format so it can test your harddisk for faulty blocks. After install, this is up to you, but I have noted that having windows updates on can impede performance & cause apps to stop working over a period of time. It usually does not happen instantly, but after a few months. I have had my XP instal for years with no problems. You just have to know what causes probs & what to avoid. Updates always will slow your machine over time, & sometimes crash it fatally where a re-install is the only fix. If you prefer to leave them on, however, there are so many here that are die-hard always download whatever update that MS sends you, I am sure they would flame me. The basic premises, however, are don't go to bad sites known for hijacks such as shady adult sites Do not, do not, DO NOT install material from websites claiming you have a "malware infection" as they INSTALL malware (not remove it!) Do not install "plugins" needed to view ojects on a page. This is a trick to exploit your system. Watch the P2P programs you install (Cabos is safer than Limewire due to the bundled software Limewire sometimes installs) Install Firefox & use it exclusively, as IE is full of holes & exploits including Active X driveby installs Install AVG free with updates, defraggler, ccleaner, flash for firefox & ie, java, infra recorder You can turn off the visual effects for better performance. I usually leave the bottom 3 checkmarked + the screen fonts one. XP has a built in firewall, but some prog like Zone Alarm are noted for superior firewall capabilities. Careful here. Probs with a firewall installation may leave you unable to access the web if you do not know what you are doing. I believe that you should be able to use your PC with defraggler if you follow the above directions. If you tried it all & still cannot, let me know. I will be glad to assist you further.

Aethec, the point it to get it working. He can always re-upgrade to SP3 after the fact. SP3 is more buggy than SP2, yet you advise against it because of support ending. The fact is, it is software. If support ended, or all humans died, etc, it would still work long after you are gone. SP1 is practically worthless because most AV & other programs require at least SP2. SP2 is pretty stable/upgraded firewall/security etc. SP3 is harped as an advanced SP with bugs, fixes, & 10% faster speed increase. But it also contains bugs that can fatally in some cases, break the compatibility or ability of programs to function as desired. Reverting to SP2 is as simple as either doing a System Restore, or going to Add/Remove programs & running the uninstall tool for it. In any case, if going back to SP2 will fix it, he can always re-upgrade to SP3 later. Why would you advise against fixing the problem, simply because of lack of support? When I fix problems, I do not care if there isn't any MS Support, because I know that I know what I am doing, & I don't need their support to fix it. There are some MS updates in time past, that have actually caused massive machine failure across hundreds of machines due to faulty drivers released. I am not here to advise things based on support available for them, but rather to provide a fix that works. Thanks!

Your question is very confusing. Defraggler doesn't leave blue blocks behind. Blue blocks are blocks that are defragged. They turn blue when they are no longer fragmented. Shrink? What did you shrink, what did you clean? We need more details here!