JDPower

While we're on the subject, are there ANY trustworthy freeware keyloggers???

Agreed, I wouldn't trust any keylogger program that sends the keylogged information across the internet. Although having said that I'm not sure I'd trust ANY keylogger I'll leave it to others to give a fuller answer but think of some of the info that could be logged (passwords etc), would you really be happy having that travelling across the internet to potentially anywhere or anyone?

I've been using AVG free for three years, never had any problems with it and have never (touch wood) been infected by a virus since using it.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding but it already does that, tick the 'Old prefetch data' box in the 'System' section.

Hence the reason I suggested it as an addition to the advanced section. I understand why you would say that but anything in the advanced section personally I only tick when I want to use them, ie they aren't permanently ticked, and as the advanced section is unticked by default (and gives a warning message for dangerous settings) I think it would be a perfectly safe addition. Most new users won't go near the advanced section anyway and the ones that do would almost certainly be scared off by a warning message.

Do you mean the account number that is stored for signing into an online bank account? If so you will need to select the cookie to be saved. Easiest way to do this is run CCleaner to clear the cookies first (will make it easier to find the banking one when you create it next), then sign in to your online bank, ticking any box which says something like 'Save my account number on this computer'. You can then sign out of your bank if you wish but then open CCleaner. Click on 'Options' then 'Cookies'. You should see a cookie in the Cookies to delete box with the name of your bank or something very similar in it. Select that cookie then click the -> arrow to move the cookie to the Cookies to keep box. Now when you run CCleaner it won't remove the stored account number. Apologies if this wasn't what you were asking but thats what it sounded like

Possible feature suggestion? Add 'Remove all but most recent restore point' to the advanced section. Its something I do fairly regularly as I like to have system restore running but don't like to have any more restore points than necessary and currently the only way I know to remove old ones is through disk cleanup which is pretty slow to open.

I know this is OT but whats the difference between the lite, medium and full versions of Dial-a-fix? (I have used the lite version in the past to fix a Windows update problem)

He obviously also uses AOL too and disabling AOLacsd.exe I think would cause problems.

They are both Firefox extensions: NoScript AdBlock Plus If you haven't got Firefox (Get it here) they will be of no use to you, you should try it though, I wouldn't be without it now. Personally I have Spyware Blaster, AVG and Sygate running constantly. Run Ewido and AdAware about once a week, AVG once a fortnight and CCleaner about once an hour . Also, as it was mentioned, I browse with Firefox using AdBlock (not AdBlock Plus). Don't use NoScript, tried it but just could't get on with it.

Yup, its easy enough. Open CCleaner, click on the options button then the custom button. Click on 'Add folder' on the right then just browse to and select the folders you want to add. When you want to clean these folders tick the "Custom files and folders" box under the Windows tab in the cleaner section, run the cleaner and the contents of the folder will be removed (and the folder will be left intact )

I tried it and it messed up my right click context menu, putting extra spaces and lines in (thankfully fixed just by uninstalling) so sticking with old version for now.

Thanks RRidgely, I never think to look for new versions of Firetune

Same here

Doh!!! http://www.speedguide.net/downloads.php (Did mean to put it in original post, honest )

And if so what do you think of it?

Hmmm, my mistake it seems. All I had to do was just use the wizard to backup my selection, rather than making the selections and clicking backup Thanks for the reply and software recommendations, been meaning to try out ERUNT and NTREGOPT for a while so downloading them now

I may be making an obvious mistake here as this is my first attempts at creating backups (bought about by my first unplanned reformat ). I'm using WinXPs built in backup program (NT Backup). Problem is I go through the list of programs and docs ticking the items I want to backup and click create backup. But after it finishes the backup it says there were errors and to see the report for details. If I use the backup wizard to do a full backup it does it without any error. Can anyone give any idea what I'm doing wrong? The report created after the errored backup is below if that is helps find the problem: Backup Status Operation: Backup Active backup destination: File Media name: "Computer backup files + Sys state created 02/04/2006 at 20:59" Backup (via shadow copy) of "C: " Backup set #1 on media #1 Backup description: "Set created 02/04/2006 at 20:59" Media name: "Computer backup files + Sys state created 02/04/2006 at 20:59" Backup Type: Normal Backup started on 02/04/2006 at 21:00. Backup completed on 02/04/2006 at 21:01. Directories: 221 Files: 402 Bytes: 61,577,815 Time: 49 seconds Backup (via shadow copy) of "System State" Backup set #2 on media #1 Backup description: "Set created 02/04/2006 at 20:59" Media name: "Computer backup files + Sys state created 02/04/2006 at 20:59" Backup Type: Copy Backup started on 02/04/2006 at 21:01. Error: Could not access portions of directory System State\COM+ Class Registration Database. You may not have permission to open the file, or the directory may be missing or damaged. Please contact the owner or administrator. Error: Could not access portions of directory System State\Registry. You may not have permission to open the file, or the directory may be missing or damaged. Please contact the owner or administrator. Backup completed on 02/04/2006 at 21:04. Directories: 142 Files: 2343 Bytes: 402,646,456 Time: 3 minutes and 0 seconds Critical files that make up System State were not successfuly backed up. Restoring this backup set will cause system failure. ---------------------- The operation did not successfully complete. ----------------------

Well I finally did it and it worked pretty much fine. Even stopped halfway to ask me if I really wanted to reinstall my 'unsigned' Omega drivers . It did corrupt my modem drivers, so couldn't connect to net to activate Windows, causing a phone call to Microsoft India, but the bloke was very efficient so no real problem. Have even copied the folder to disc for future use if necessary. Had to reinstall a load of Windows updates as expected and I now have a nice full $hf_mig$ folder (and no longer have that bloody stupid active-x update) In case anyone was wondering I did some digging and it seems the Toshiba recovery disc that I couldn't access Windows from only contains a Norton Ghost image of the hard drive as was when factory installed. This is apparently standard practice with Tosh recovery cds. I downloaded the free trial version of Ghost to have a look for myself and its right, all the files installed after reformat are there exactly the same on the disc. Thanks for all the help and advice again krit (and MikeW for the original post)

Would it be reasonable to add a tickbox to the Options>Advanced section to allow the deletion of ALL prefetch files instead of just old prefetch data. I was thinking something along the lines of the temp folders option, eg A tickbox for: "Only delete prefetch data older than 48 hours" so that it could be unticked if wanted and CCleaner would clean all files in prefetch.

I don't necessarily need a full program, just one that can open and extract files from Ghost files.

Yeah yeah I know, the irony isn't lost on me either. Gonna give it a try a shortly. My I386 folder should be ok as I only just reformatted and reinstalled a couple of weeks ago and reinstalling sp2 yesterday I would hope would fix any possible corruption. Besides the recovery disc with sp2 has no easily usable traces of Windows so can't copy it from there anyway.

Right, well looks like you can't really get round it as the Windows files aren't present on the disk in their normal format. I did find this: I tried this and it said it couldn't do an upgrade install as it couldn't find "C:\i386\WINNTUPG\NETUPGRD.DLL". So I explored the sp1 recovery disk and found the WINNTUPG folder, I copied it into the i386 folder on my comp and tried the above again and this time it DID give me the option of an upgrade reinstall. I didn't go any further as I thought I'd post here first. Would this be a good way of reinstalling XP or would I be better off using No4 two posts above to atempt to remove sp2 despite using the recovery disk for a different pc?

Well tried reinstalling sp2, still isn't listed in add/remove. Not really surprised as I tried reinstalling that silly active-x hotfix last week cos I wanted to uninstall and that didn't put the uninstaller back either. Went through the four suggestions in that link (after reinstalling sp2): No1, use add/remove, can't do that, not there. No2, put uninstaller file path in 'Run', didn't work, said file wasn't there. No3, system restore, nope XPsp2 was preinstalled so no sp2 restore point. No4, hmmm looks scary. Especially as I only have available Windows on a recovery disc meant for a different computer (as the recovery disc for this comp will only let me do reformat then reinstall). I did start but chickened out as during the Windows setup (before the 'Welcome to setup' message) I saw it loading all sorts of things at the bottom which were for the old pc, eg FAT32 file system (this comp is NTFS), and I didn't want to risk ballsing it up completely. SO, is this method still possible with this disc even though its for a different pc? I've had two reformats in past two months, I really don't want another Can't believe the recovery disc for this computer will only let me do a reformat, gonna go do some Googling there must be some way of just reinstalling/repairing Windows using it, all of the above would be unnecessary then.

Its a recovery disc. Just a thought, is it possible to replace the sp2 uninstaller?