JDPower

Because they said their Google toolbar preferences were being cleared

That sounds like a pretty big clue

Stumbled across another very interesting extension, though I've not tried it yet as its FF2 only and I'm still on 1.5 but I like the sound of it: SafeCache - Segments the cache on the basis of the originating document, defending against web privacy attacks that remote sites can use to determine your browser history at other sites. For example, a b.com image appearing on an a.com page would have a separate cache entry from the same image appearing on a b.com page, so a.com cannot use timing techniques to determine if you have visited b.com before. Checks cookie settings (allow, originating site only, deny) to determine your desired privacy level (segmented cache, cache originating site only, or never cache). And heres a COMPLETELY useless, but nevertheless interesting, extension: Raed Tihs - Scrambles all text on the current tab's page, but you will still be able to read it! This is a simple demonstration of the theory that letter-order within a word has no impact on readability, beyond the first and last letters.

(Deleted)

Calm down indeed. Can I just point you in the direction of THIS THREAD where it clearly states: Untick the index.dat box and be patient.

That is the easiest way I think.

You should be okay, the only program you mentioned that can do serious damage is RegSeeker. I have it but use it very rarely, and thats only to find entries for things that I've removed (even then I only delete entries that I'm 99% certain are safe). If you're in any doubt at all, just leave it alone

Is that Adblock or Adblock Plus? I'm using Adblock and have had no problems at all, everything I've blocked has never reappeared.

Though I wouldn't recommend ticking ANY of the advanced section (except custom files and folders if used) unless you know exactly what you're doing, and what will result after doing so. Particularly the hotfix uninstallers can cause problems and should be used sparingly. Also cleaning old prefetch data is pointless and if anything will probably only slow your computers performance. Check the Beginners Guide for more info on the advanced section. Some users, as I'm sure you probably noticed, have reported some things not being cleaned with the new version so that may also explain why you've noticed less being cleaned.

I tried Cleanup about a month ago. Ran CCleaner till 0 bytes removed, then immediately ran Cleanup, which found about 700kb of files to clean. Didn't run it in the opposite direction as CCleaner seemed clearly superior (IMO) and Cleanup wasn't worth keeping for the sake of an extra 700k cleaned.

From MrG in the announcements section:

No that just shows the menu bar. The fix above puts the menu bar back at the top of the browser where it used to be in IE6.

What about this comment on the IE SpyAd site: "If you use IE-SPYAD in conjunction with SpywareBlaster or Spybot Search & Destroy, you should be aware that there is considerable overlap between the Restricted sites lists maintained by these three programs. As a result of that overlap, you may encounter minor issues while updating IE-SPYAD. See the ReadMe for IE-SPYAD for more information and advice. My recommendation is to use ONE program to add sites to your Restricted sites zone. Using multiple programs to add sites to your Restricted sites zone leads only to overlap, conflicts, and confusion without necessarily increasing your level of protection."

Like that site, highly amusing. Especially the "Aaargh, you're blocking my ads, stop it" popup

Try unticking the 'Office' boxes in the applications section

From where?

Whoops, just assumed it was a Vista style pack or something

Thanks for all the suggestions. I tried most of them but just didn't feel comfortable with them. Thanks to RRidgely for the Snapfiles link as I found a program called Abakt on there which is quite close to what I wanted - ie shows everything on pc in a tree-like structure with tickboxes for each area/folder so just a case of ticking items for backup, same as how Windows backup works. Biggest downside is the backups it creates seem very big. The backup I was trying to do with NT Backup was an estimated 5GB, with Abakt its near 15GB (though it does have a zip option) Still looking though so any more suggestions are welcome

Like the icons (nice theme too), where are they from?

If you are using IE7 this is a bug with the current version of CCleaner. Try unticking the 'Delete index.dat files' checkbox in the Internet Explorer section of CCleaner (Next version of CCleaner should fix this)

Brilliant, got to be the most important fix for some time, I'll certainly feel alot safer using CCleaner after this

Good news. Are you able to tell us if there will be any kind of fix or check for the environment variables problem?

Well I actually want a program that will backup files and stuff that I select just like the NT backup does, but as I said that won't work without error. I don't want to backup a complete hard drive image.

As the MS backup program refuses to do an error free backup for me I was wondering if anyone had any suggestions for a good, simple too use (ie like the NT backup) program just for making on demand backups (not bothered about automatic or scheduled backups). I tried Cobian but didn't like it at all so any other suggestions?

You say Reg Mechanic seems safe enough but do you mean you can relatively safely remove most or all of what it finds? I downloaded the free version you mentioned a couple of weeks back and it finds about 160 problems on my computer (compared to about 450 with RegSeeker).