rogertdj

I'm not sure if I should reply to your replies or not, doesn't it just continue a string of useless discussion attached to a comment which was intended only to clarify a particular point? My intention was for people who google a question -- when they read the old topic and are trying to comprehend what's going on, it provides a bit of clarification. I think I spotted a few people asking for clarification on the particulars of "Missing Shared DLL's" but no clear answer. This topic had the closest answer so I added some clarification to give future searchers a more complete answer. If you don't want me to do that, let me know. Roger

Interesting.. can you double-check the entire path to the DLL files in the CCleaner screen, navigating that exact path using windows explorer.. and do you find the exactly same named .DLL files in that folder? I checked out "what" your program is and due to the nature of it being a disc encryption utility, it is possible that there is some kind of protective mechanism in place to prevent those files from even being seen by user apps (i.e. CCleaner can't see the files but can see the registry links). (you wouldn't want just any app to interfere with your ability to read your hard drive, would you?) I wouldn't sweat this too much. If you could -- backup your hard disc, then try the following -- Scan the registry, backup of those keys then accept deletion, then immediately do another scan, if the keys are still there then you don't need to worry about it, if they aren't then restore the keys immediately. (DO NOT reboot before restoring the keys!!!) I'm guessing you can't even remove the registry keys. If you can't remove them, then this is not an issue and you can just run the clean every time without worrying about it. Roger Tiedemann, Jr. A+, Network+, MCP

Mostly correct.. the statement "it is okay to delete most if not all of these missing DLL's." was mis-stated. I think what you meant was "It is okay to delete these registry keys, because they no longer point to a file." The registry key and data are what we're deleting, not the file. The file is already missing (not there). The idea here is that the file was deleted by the uninstaller, but the uninstaller did not remove the registry entry. Hence when you do a registry check, you find a link pointing to a file, but there's no file. I tend to agree with the statement that, "it's ok to delete most if not all DLL's where the Uninstaller tells you it's a shared DLL and there will be no other apps sharing it after this app is uninstalled." We used to see this a lot when uninstalling apps... You had to select "yes for all" or be asked 20 times for each app you uninstalled... I believe this to be the best answer. It's rare for this to interfere with another app, and if so you just reinstall that app it should fix the issue. Roger Tiedemann, Jr. A+, Network+, MCP

From a system development stand-point these sound like two completely different issues. I understood the missing GB issue to be because wipe-free-space claims almost all available 100G space as one giant file, then writes random numbers across the file over and over to erase the data that was on the hard disc's surface. If CCleaner were to be forced to close before it "deleted" the file in the sense of telling the OS to delete the gigantic file, then you end up with a gigantic file which has not been "deleted" (in the OS sense, not related to the wiping sense, which is just ccleaner writing random data over the top of old data on a hard drive). It's perfectly legal to have a gigantic file on your hard drive that has not been deleted. How to fix this from the user's point of view? Find the gigantic file and delete it. How to "fix" this misperception / user-time-out from the developer's stand-point? Possibly create the file in the Temporary Files directory and don't set the Read-only bit (hence it will likely be deleted later if something goes wrong). Additionally instead of 1 gigantic 100g file, how about many smaller files and none of them over a certain size, say none larger than 5G.. that would create 20 5G files instead and wipe-free could then just make sure it deletes each of the first 19 as it completes them and updates the % completion. Anyway, getting back to this person's question -- it sounds like what he's asking is "why does Windows make use of the free-space that's intermingled with the space that is already non-fragmented?" The answer in this case is, that's the way it's designed. That's the issue that creates the need for a defragmenter to begin with. If you think about it though, there's not much you can really do to get around this issue without either wasting a lot of hard drive space, or else a lot of time spent suddenly defragmenting your hard drive when you're trying to use the computer for something else. Imagine you boot up your computer and click on internet explorer so you can check your bank statement or whatever... and up pops the defragment utility and you have to wait to use IE until it's done defragmenting. This is a reason why Windows doesn't use the larger block of space that's further out, it would be impractical in the long run. It would also make for longer seeks, the head of the drive would have to move a longer distance to "switch between files". (there are other ways to get around the issue, but they involve OS changes, which Piriform is not doing and MS would be the one to talk to..) MS claims to have designed Windows Vista and later to have over-come the need for defragmenting your system. I'm interested in how they accomplish this, I'm guessing they have a defragment process kick on when the system reaches an idle state for a few seconds and it defragments until interrupted. Roger Tiedemann, Jr A+, Network+, MCP

Hi! Generally speaking it's harmless to install an app over the top of itself. There are exceptions to the this rule however. What I'd do in your case since you're concerned about data loss, go to your C:\Program Files folder and copy the folder that contains the hockey program to "hockey--backup" or some other name. Since this is a copy it won't be affected by the re-installation. Then you can reinstall the Hockey program to the original folder. I do recommend that you uninstall the app first, then install it again. But definitely copy that folder first if you do an uninstall. Different companies have different ideas of what "uninstalling" means, some think it includes deletion of all data and/or configuration files that are present in the same folder. To do this -- right click on your Start button, click Explore (wait a few seconds because explorer can be annoying when it first opens), Scroll the left pane to the top, click on your (C:) drive, look for Program Files and click on it, look for your Hockey program and right click on the folder and click Copy, then right click on Program Files and click Paste. It will create a folder called "copy of hockey..." you can leave this called this name or you can change it to "hockey--backup" like I said above... whatever rocks your boat. Adjust these instructions as appropriate for your computer. Regards, Roger Tiedemann, Jr. A+, Network+, MCP