Joe B

Yep, well, looked at it - pretty generic - doesn't tell me any more than I already know or would have guessed - some things are obvious - some are definitely not. If you look at some of my specific items, you'll see that the document doesn't answer the question. What damage did I do to myself by including "tray notification cache" (which I have NOT done because I don't know why it is in the "advanced" section)? I do NOT have "desktop shortcuts" checked - my desktop is set up for speed of access, etc. So far as I know, CCleaner will be a good boy scout and delete all my desktop shortcuts -- OUCH! The doc is a generic "we do good stuff and don't worry about it". ya know? It also implies that tmp files, unless specifically mentioned are not touched - I don't know if that is true or not. I think it looks for ALL log files to delete, but I don't know, does it? Or just the applications, etc. that are specifically in the menus of CCleaner? If I went down each item, what info do I have from this doc or elsewhere? [i have History AND Recently Typed URL's in IE? Huh? They aren't the same thing? Why should I care or not care about IE's index.dat? (not asking for philosophy, its just that you specifically separate it from "temporary internet files" - and aren't they together? I assume you separate them because you can't immediately delete index.dat - but does that mean if I reboot in another day you're going to leave all the new temporary files but delete the index.dat to them? Is that OK or crazy - beats me..) ] I'd actually love to right click on an item and have it explain all about it (what it is, what damage I could do to myself, the value of checking it - if it is more than just to clean up), for instance. [Why is "old prefetch data" advanced? What damage can I do by checking that, which I do, btw. Why are these caches in "advanced"? It seems that cleaning those out has little downside -- again, unless you are doing something that is not obvious - to me, a cache can be emptied with no medium to long term bad effect - just short term slow down - because you have it in "advanced", I think you imply otherwise.. If I were to right click on "index.dat" in IE, for instance, I'd see that you can't immediately delete it and that I should reboot immediately after telling CCleaner to delete -- and maybe that it can grow to be a meg in size - or only 10K?? and that it is used to point to IE's temporary files. - As a simple example.. Anyway, thanks for the pointer... -- Joe B.

Last, first? If Flock isn't covered because it is an offshoot of Firefox, please add it - I would have thought they would do the same thing - not always. I'm a techy and very surprised that I find several features of Flock very useful over IE and Firefox (since much is touchy-feelie stuff). My main suggestion is documentation. When chasing down a problem once, someone said run XXX first to make sure things are clean. Oh, it cleaned them alright -- I frequently start out with a tmp or temp area and start loading it up with downloads and such - in the beginning maybe it is temp, but then in evolves. Well, this program, without specifically saying so deleted every freakin thing with temp or tmp somewhere in the name or folder. I lost a lot of stuff - still years later I wonder if "that" is where these pictures disappeared, etc. So, when I ran CCleaner, it was on a pc that was not crucial - didn't know what it would do - hence the suggestion - a doc of what each item is and what you will do. OK, sounds stupid, right? Well what does "Start Menu Shortcuts" mean? You're going to delete all my shortcuts? My menu will be empty afterwords? Why should I or should I not delete IE "index.dat" - do I lose my passwords, cookies, start WW3? Custom Folders? You delete all the custom folders?? What do I lose by deleting "tray notifcation cache"? [i'd think nothing, but I don't know.] What is "user assist history" - do I care? On each one, why would I NOT choose it? (Like maybe I shouldn't delete "windows logs" for some reason?) And, what DO you consider temporary files? How about files like xxx.TEMPlate or c:\TEMP\*.* or c:\TMP\*.* or DOS "xxx~1.tmp", etc.? [Or do you just stick to user local settings temp and windows\temp - I don't know?] ---- On "cleaner", I see that cookies already claim to be removed when I say "analyze" - I don't care, just looking as I go. Also, why no checkboxes on this list? You have checkboxes on the registry. [until someone recently asked for cookie help, I thought passwords were kept in there and learned otherwise when I tested stuff by deleting all cookies.] There are some cookies that I'd like to keep around "just in case". I need to go through the 3rd degree every time I go to some of these banks if the cookie isn't there. So, I think I would scan the list and end up clearing the checkbox for a dozen sites -- HA! Unless I'm wrong about these, too!!! And with those checkboxes -- if I'm unchecking some, how about the option to remember what I've unchecked? That way, after running CCleaner 1 time, I won't necessarily have to go through and uncheck things for the next time. [same for registry, of course.] (I do see under options that I can tell it which cookies to keep -- but if you have checkboxes, that becomes faster, more obvious to allow me to save that info there - I only went to options and selected each item to see what else you have - I doubt most people do that. In registry, what the heck is "Old Start Menu key"? I thought something was in the menu or not -- so documentation, in some cases, should be there for more than just what I can select - in this case it is what you will reportedly do - that would go a long way to assuring no damage done -- and educate the user. [i haven't figured out "start menu ordering" - you didn't scramble my menu for me -- or maybe you did and I didn't notice?] Whew, well, them's be my suggestions - did I just make the project 5 times bigger? HA! For documentation, at least, a lot of other people could help contribute what each item is, etc. And I think that is a big thing - to know what this does. [The first time I ran it, I just let it default -- was not happy to have to enter all my winvnc target URL's again, lose my RUN history ( and history in Process Explorer), etc. I hesitate to suggest a warning when 1st running this - the uninitiated would likely freak out. But maybe a write-up of what potential concerns I'd have about running CCleaner right out of the box? Maybe 1st time suggest I look at that before running it and "don't panic" because "most people want the default settings"? OK, time to get back to work -- pretty nice product, BTW.. -- Joe B.