uncleguido

Ok...I know I'm going to sound totally clueless and/or brain-dead, but I'm having serious problems and have been using CCleaner since October 09. Beginning after the Christmas holidays, I started getting numerous errors, but can't find the cause; I checked the restore option in CCcleaner, but there are so many registry entries in the "restore" file that I don't know which or how many I should actually try to restore in order to get my pc back in working order. And when I do click on an entry, I'm not sure what happens next. I'm plagued with RUNDLL errors, System 32 errors, missing modules, lost audio/sound, lost Recovery Partition and HP Application Recovery. I've spent hours reading online how to repair "this and that" but nothing works. I've run various malware and spyware programs, but nothing indicates a problem. I have the original cd's that came with my pc, but the "E" drive won't recognize them. I tried to do a total restore from the hd, and provided the necessary product key but received a message that the restore "could not continue". It's only 3 years old and used mostly to store photos, send/receive email and check online news websites. So, tell me...is my pc totally toasted?

Thanks for your response. I use CCleaner often, just this morning, and then ran Recuva for photos only; found 34,964 files, 72.0GB, all of which were junk with the exception of a few of my own photos that I've already saved to CD's. Saw no feature for deletion of all this junk. Did save a couple of samples via screen captures, just in case I need to make a point in future.

Ran Recuva and noticed that every newspaper photo, including their ads showed up during a scan of my "C" drive. I read online newspapers every morning, but had no idea they were attaching junk that would "adhere" to my hd. Am I to understand that these photos/ads are imbedded forever after I view them? Is there any way to prevent this? Surely, all this junk is taking up good usable memory space. OK...I admit I'm technically challenged but had good luck so far since I bought my pc in 2006 with only a couple minor glitches; I'm aware of "cookies", add ons and pop-up ads certainly, but didn't know everything I ever scanned online stays on my pc, even stuff I don't recall having looked at, i.e., auto ads, real estate promos, entertainers and celebrities, photos of politicians, and people's photos that I don't have a clue as to their identity, not to mention all the miscellaneous icons and bits and pieces that I don't even recognize . How do I get rid of it, and can Recuva help me? Try not to laugh too hard, ok?