Rob R

I had a similar experience when I went to download CCleaner. It appears that there is some sneaky stuff on the page and you end up on a page that speaks to an entirely different product ("RegCure") and vendor (PC-Tools): http://pccleaner-download.com/?gclid=CNbqz...CFQZfswodv178qg This happened in Firefox and I believe it was because I missed Firefoxe's "Allow this redirect" prompt and, instead, clicked on a great big, prominent "Download Now" button that took me to the competing product. Pretty sleazy piece of work, that.

Lately, my PC has been taking longer and longer to boot/startup. Plus, I occasionally run into long pauses in the middle of operations. CCleaner was recommended as part of a solution to these problems. I have already gotten a clean bill of health from Mbam, Spybot Search and Destroy, Windows Malicious software removal utility, and my Trend Micro products. Yesterday (14 Mar 09) I downloaded, updated, and ran CCleaner. After cleaning up the temp files, I ran the Registry tool. It identified 1,988 registry issues over a number of categories. I selected to fix all issues (making sure to run the backup). I rebooted only to discover that Win XP SP3 would no longer boot. However, I was able to go into the Safe Mode and merge the backed up issues back into the registry. All seems OK now, except that I still have 1,988 registry issues! The issues are distributed over the issue categories, as follows: Issue.......................Hits Unused File Extension 497 Missing Shared DLL 482 Uninstaller Reference Issue 382 ActiveX/COM Issue 270 Installer Reference Issue 139 Old Start Menu key 85 Invalid Default Icon 35 Missing TypeLib Reference 34 Open with Application Issue 28 Application Paths Issue 10 Missing MUI Reference 8 Obsolete software key 8 Help File Issue 6 Invalid or empty file class 3 Missing Startup Software 1 My problem is I have no earthly idea of what each of these means and, more to the poijnt, what are the potential side effects in each of these issues. I am no guru. Can someone explain for each of these categories: 1. What is this issue really telling me (please do NOT say. e.g., "Help File Issue is an issue with help files"!)? 2. What facts should I be looking at when making a decision whether or not to "fix" the issue? 3. Are there some categories of issues where you can ALWAYS and WITH total certainty fix the whole lot, with no side effects? 4. Which categories, if any, have a significant effect on boot/startup time (which is the major problem I am having with my PC - often takes it up to 10 minutes to settle down, after which it is quite responsive and peppy). Having been bit once on CCleaner, I am more hesitant to move ahead with this registry business. I do not think I have enough years of life remaining to fix 1,988 issues, one at a time, and reboot after each fix. I'd sooner put up with the slow boot/restart. Thanks in advance