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GoneToPlaid

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Posts posted by GoneToPlaid

  1. No, Ccleaner does not install any malware. Ccleaner does optionally install Google Chrome and Google Toolbar, but only if you leave these optional items checked during installation.

     

    For anyone who "thinks" that Ccleaner installed malware on their computer, then I can guarantee that this is due to one and/or the other of the following two things:

     

    1. You installed Ccleaner from an unreliable web site. In other words, you installed a hacked version of Ccleaner in which hackers added malware to the installer.

     

    2. Your computer is already infected with malware, and the malware intercepted your attempt to download Ccleaner from either Piriform, FileHippo, or CNET and instead downloaded a hacked version of Ccleaner from another Internet location.

  2. Good points are mentioned by Nergal and Andavari. More importantly, some FF plugins may not properly release their hold on FF bookmarks when FF is closed. Task Manager may show that FF is not running. The issue is that the FF bookmarks files may not have been properly updated and closed when exiting FF. If you manually back up your improperly closed FF bookmarks (via file copy using Windows Explorer), and then later restore them, your restored bookmarks may be corrupt such that you can't add new bookmarks. Ccleaner does check for this issue when it runs, and Ccleaner fixes this issue. The moral of the story is, before backing up your FF bookmarks and user profile, always run Ccleaner first so that Ccleaner can fix these issues, before backing up your FF bookmarks or your entire FF user profile. A few years ago I learned this the hard way. Thank goodness that Ccleaner recognizes and fixes this issue.

     

    So whenever I decide to back up my entire FF user profile (which includes bookmarks, settings, installed plugins, et cetera), I do the following:

     

    1. Close FF.

    2. Run Ccleaner.

    3. Make a backup copy of my FF user profile to another folder on my computer.

     

    The one thing I don't do is to let Ccleaner compact FF's databases since I have not thoroughly tested this feature and since I really don't see that this is really necessary. I have thousands of FF bookmarks, all neatly organized into hundreds of bookmark folders, plus around two dozen installed FF themes, plugins and extensions. Yet my entire FF profile (which also includes all installed themes, plugins and extensions) is only 73 MB.

  3. It would take a ton of time to compile the thermal design data for CPUs into Speccy. Fortunately, you can easily look up the design specs for any specific CPU at:

     

    http://www.cpu-world.com/index.html

     

    They have done a splendid job of compiling information from the manufacturer's data sheets for each CPU model. For example, the following cpu-world page shows the specs for the Intel Core I5-5670K CPUs which is in one of my computers. You will see that this CPU's maximum operating temperature is 72.72 Celsius:

     

    http://www.cpu-world.com/CPUs/Core_i5/Intel-Core%20i5-4670K.html

     

    As a general rule of thumb, I always set CPU temperature alarms in BIOS to 60 Celsius. If the BIOS allows me to set fan speeds for the CPU, then I set the fan speed to 100% once the CPU temperature hits 50 Celsius. If I can't run my CPUs at 100% workload and keep the CPU temperature to 60 Celsius or below, then I know that I need to install a better CPU heatsink/fan and/or add additional case fans.

     

    As far as GPUs go, it is always best to check the manufacturer's web site for the specific data sheet.

  4. Hello Kokopelli,

     

    Your old Seagate 200 GB hard drive definitely is failing.The hard drive's powered on time is over 7 years. The drive has 86 reallocated sectors, but the real value of reallocated sectors is 594 reallocated sectors. Currently the drive has 4 pending sectors to be reallocated, but they can't be reallocated since the hard drive has run out of spare sectors for sector reallocation. Thus these 4 sectors also show up as 4 sectors which are uncorrectable and which can't be reallocated. Back up your data on this hard drive and replace it as soon as possible. Quite frankly, I am amazed that you got over 7 years of use out of this old hard drive since most cheap consumer hard drives start to fail around year 5.

  5. Re my previous post where I thought that cleaning up my Firefox bookmarks seemed to resolve CCleaner's crashing on first launch after a reboot, that didn't solve the problem after all. So I will try everyone's suggestion of completely uninstalling CCleaner and then doing a fresh install on all of my computers. Thanks Eolo for your reply and your notes about how a fresh install seems to have fixed the issue on your family and friend's computers.

  6. I too have an Acer Travelmate with a Core I5 and Win7 Pro, but I have never experienced this issue with CCleaner. Note that I rarely use my laptop's built-in touchpad (keep it disabled nearly all the time) and instead use a USB mouse. So I am guessing that either your laptop's touchpad driver or video driver may need to be updated? Do you see anything in the Event Viewer which might indicate the cause of CCleaner's crashes? Anyway, I never get device drivers for video, networking, or touchpads from Microsoft's Windows Update. Instead I always get these device drivers either directly from the computer vendor's web site or from the OEM manufacturer's web site since there may be non Microsoft certified device drivers available which fix specific issues such as this.

  7. I too was having this issue with CCleaner build is v5.10.5373. Note that I am using the free version and do not have any of CCleaner's monitoring features enabled. CCleaner was crashing only the first time I launched CCleaner after rebooting my Windows XP computer, and I assumed that the issue was with this CCleaner build. CCleaner didn't crash when I subsequently launched CCleaner.

     

    I also noticed that I was having problems adding new bookmarks to a particular bookmark folder in Firefox. The problem was that the last bookmark in the folder was being overwritten with the data for the new bookmark which I was trying to add to this bookmark folder in Firefox. Since I have a ton of bookmarks in tons of folders in Firefox, I figured that it was time for me to clean up some of those large bookmark folders by removing some bookmark entries and moving other bookmark entries to new subfolders. I got this idea from reading online that Firefox does have limits for the number of entries in bookmark folders, and for the maximum size of all bookmarks.

     

    So, to make a long story short, after I removed some Firefox bookmarks and reorganized them such that no bookmark folder or subfolder contains too many bookmark entries, I discovered that CCleaner no longer crashes the first time it is launched after rebooting my computer, or whenever I subsequently launch CCleaner.

  8. I recall having this issue around 4 or 5 years ago on a friend's computer. In that case, it turned out that NAV itself was compromised by malware which specifically targeted NAV and had nothing to do with CCleaner. All CCleaner did at the time was reveal the issue such that, after running CCleaner, NAV wouldn't start on the next reboot. Just a thought for what its worth.

  9. Hi Ellen,

     

    I will try to answer all of your questions!

     

    "if I analyze (System) Temporary Files, it shows one file, when there are dozens of the same type same origin, same date" -- by default, CCleaner only removes temporary files which are older than 24 hours. Or you can reboot and then run CCleaner again to remove these files. If those files mysteriously show up again after running CCleaner and you have no other apps or web browsers running, then you might want to download and install and run the free versionsMalwarebytes Anti-Malware as a second check for whatever antivirus program you are using and in order to be sure that no malware is lurking on your computer which your antivirus program missed. Another possibility is that your present XP SP3 installation is actually an upgrade from an older Windows 98 installation? If this is the case, then some folders and temp files from the older Win98 installation will exist which CCleaner deliberately does not clean since they are related to the Win98 state before you upgraded your computer to Windows XP. Simply ignore these folders since they take up very little space on your hard drive. You could manually clean them, but I don't recommend it since you could make a mistake and since deleting some of the files will require booting in Safe Mode and going to a command prompt to delete some of the files. Again, it is best to simply ignore these files.

     

    "It shows nothing in prefetch data, but I know from going there that is not the case." -- CCleaner only searches for old or stale prefetch data, and doesn't remove any of the current and "good" prefetch data. This is why, even though CCleaner reports "0 bytes to be removed" for prefetch data, your windows prefetch folder still contains numerous prefetch files. Why? Those files in the Prefetch folder are both current and "good", and they accellerate the startup of Windows as well as accellerating the startup of your frequently used programs. Microsoft states that users should never delete the contents of the prefetch folder. While no actual harm is done by deleting everything in the prefetch folder, after doing so it can take up to three reboots of your computer plus running your most used programs before both Windows bootup and program launching speed returns to normal. Before then, bootup and program launching will be noticeably slower.

     

    "I have the same problem with cookies in Firefox. It seems to remove cookies that are on the remove list, but does not add new ones to the list that are clearly listed by Firefox. It does keep the ones I want, but I have to go through manually to remove the others." -- I am a little confused, but your best option is to manually select in CCleaner the additional Firefox cookies which you want to keep. If you are referring to any cookies associated with online banking, you do NOT want those cookies to ever be saved! Why? Cross-site cookie vulnerabilities in all web browsers could allow a malicious web page to steal your bank login information from cookies which are associated with banking web sites. Thus it is Firefox itself which wipes out those banking cookies when Firefox is closed -- assuming that the banking web site instructs Firefox to do so. If any banking web site is saving cookies after Firefox (or any other web browser has been closed), then that banking web site has security issues and the bank is not following current "best security practices".

     

    "The same goes for any folder that I try to add under the include option. Only part of the contents is shown or removed." -- CCleaner isn't meant to be a "wipe all" for specific folders. Hehe. Imagine specifying "C:\" or "C:\Windows" as folders to be cleaned. Wouldn't that be a really quick way to render a user's computer inoperative! CCleaner is primarily a registry cleaning tool along with enhancements for cleaning up the junk and unnecessary files created by numerous programs. If you want to periodically delete the contents of specific folders, then there are several other freeware utilities which are tailored for this specific purpose.

     

    Best regards,

     

    --GTP

  10. So, I was fixing a computer belonging to the father of a friend of mine. I have a pretty set routine when fixing computers, and I proceeded as usual. Install Windows, install drivers, install applications, install updates, restore backup data, run CCleaner and then Defraggler.

     

    CCleaner's "Cleaner" portion is working just fine -- however, the "Registry" portion is giving me a few "Unused File Extension" entries that just... don't jive with what I've done. For one, it's listing .iso, .cue, and .img as several of them, when in fact I know that each of these is associated with InfraRecorder (a disc burning program).

     

    It's odd. I've had file extension problems caused by CCleaner in the past, but it was long ago.

     

    Was InfraRecorder installed on the computer and was it told to associate those file extensions with InfraRecorder? If not, then whenever the OS encounters files with the ISO, CUE AND IMG extensions, Windows will merrily create default registry entries for those file extensions but not associate those extensions with any particular program. Basically, the OS is simply keeping track of whatever unknown file types it encounters. Regardless, any Unknown File Extensions which CCleaner finds in the registry can be safely deleted or ignored -- your choice, and absolutely no harm done either way. Or as krooser mentions, you can simply deselect Unused File Extensions.

  11. Try using the old trick of adding a semicolon to the path in the registry. Thus, edit the registry key's data so that the data is (without the quotes) ";C:\Program Files (x86)\Nokia\Nokia Suite\NokiaSuite.exe -tray" Notice the semicolon which I stuck at the front of the data? The semicolon tells Windows not to load the program following the semicolon, and the program itself most likely will not merrily create another duplicate Run entry in the registry since it will see a match for the stuff following the semicolon.

  12. I purchased a new 2TB Seagate External HD...transferred 1.2 GB of data from my computer (Vista) and from a smaller Seagate HD (which has peformed 100%); shortly afterwards started to get "corrupted file" messages when accessing files on the new HD...

     

    Hi Grantchstr,

     

    Welcome to the forum. Recuva is a utility for recovering accidentally deleted files from media such as hard drives, but Recuva is not a disk recovery tool. The latter are tools for recovering as much data as possible from a failing hard drive. I assume that you transferred (rather than copying) the 1.2 GB of data from your old hard drive to the new external hard drive. If this is the case, then the data was deleted from the old hard drive, but that data can most likely be recovered by Recuva if the clusters have not been overwritten.

     

    1. Your first step is to use Recuva to undelete or recover those files on your old hard drive since that drive is a known "good" hard drive. You should perform this step immediately in an effort to recover all or nearly all of the 1.2 GB of data which was deleted from the old hard drive.

     

    2. After competeing step 1, your next step is to determine whether or not the new hard drive is a lemon or if it was damaged during shipment. Go to http://crystalmark.info/software/CrystalDiskInfo/index-e.html and download the CrystalDiskInfo utility to your old hard drive. Then install this utility onto the old hard drive.

     

    3. Once CrystalDiskInfo is installed, connect your new external drive and then launch the CrystalDiskInfo utility. The CDI utility may take a few to several seconds to start up. All of your attached hard drives are shown as buttons near the top of CDI's screen. Click on the button for your new external hard drive and see if CDI is reporting problems with the new hard drive. Then go to 3A or 3B below, depending on what CDI reports.

     

    3A. If problems are reported by CDI, i.e., a Caution or worse health status is displayed, then we should ask the experts here for recommendations about how to proceed, and you should close the CDI utility and use the Safely Remove Hardware tool in the System Tray to dismount the new hard drive so that you can then disconnect it. Recuva may or not help if the drive is a lemon, but before hooking up the drive again you should wait until the experts here chime in with their thoughts about how you should proceed.

     

    3B. If CDI reports that the new drive's health status is good, then at some point after transferring the files to the new hard drive did you simply unplug it rather than using the Safely Remove Hardware tool? If so, then this can cause data corruption and this may be the issue. In this case, Recuva should be able to recover the actual data files since in all probability only the FAT on the new hard drive got corrupted. But again, let's wait for the experts to chime in with their thoughts as to how you should proceed.

     

    4. Wait for the experts to chime in before proceeding further!

     

    Best regards,

     

    --GTP

  13. I have 16Gb of 1600 MHz RAM installed on a Gigabyte GA-MA785GMT-UD2H motherboard. But Speccy tells me that's it's only running at about 803MHz. This was also true of some Kingston RAM I installed previously. Can anyone tell me what the problem is and how to fix it ?

     

    Windows 7 64 bit

    AMD Phenom X4

     

    If you have AMD Cool & Quiet enabled in BIOS, and/or have installed the equivalent OS driver for a motherboard which doesn't natively support Cool & Quiet in BIOS, then both the reported CPU and RAM speed and the CPU speed multiplier will vary when checked by Speccy, depending on how much load the CPU is under at the time. Usually you can get Speccy to show the maximum (true) results by continuing to watch Speccy's display and while launching another CPU/memory intensive application at the same time. Choose a fairly large application to launch in order to force the Cool & Quiet technology to ramp the CPU and RAM speeds up to their maximum values. Alternatively, disable Cool & Quiet in BIOS and/or uninstall the AMD Cool & Quiet driver if the latter is also present.

  14. Hi Piriform,

     

    The latest version of Speccy (317) works great! My previous issues of errors when trying to run Speccy on some computers seem to be fixed. Following is one possible issue and some recommendations for enhancing Speccy even further.

     

    ISSUE: I did notice that my SATA drives are being mislabeled on the summary page and in-depth page as being SCSI drives. I thought that SATA drives are a completely different animal compared to SCSI drives. Or maybe it is my computer's BIOS and motherboard design which is attaching these SATA drives as SCSI devices? If that is the case, then Speccy is correctly identifying the attachment method for the drives. I mention this since Speccy doesn't add "SCSI Disk Device (ATA)" to the drive ID when I run Speccy on another computer which has SATA drives: In the latter case Speccy simply adds "(SATA)" after the drive ID strings.

     

    488GB Seagate ST350041 8AS SCSI Disk Device (ATA) 33 °C

    488GB Seagate ST500DM0 02-1BD142 SCSI Disk Device (ATA) 35 °C

     

    RECOMMENDATION #1: While not shown above, a freeware open source utility called CrystalDiskInfo correctly reports that an older Maxtor drive of mine was failing even though SMART had never been tripped. Hehe. It seems that the now defunct MAXTOR never let their drive firmware actually trip SMART, perhaps to hide the fact that their drive designs had inherent design flaws. CrystalDiskInfo correctly reports the MAXTOR drive as a failing drive, based on the fact that the drive had 1 unrecoverable sector, several reallocated sectors, plus several sectors pending reallocation which couldn't be reallocated. It would be nice if Speccy, in addition to reporting each hard drive's SMART status, would independently report the true health of each hard drive based on the raw data which Speccy already reads from each hard drive.

     

    RECOMMENDATION #2: Speccy presently does not analyze any hard drives which are attached via USB. Perhaps Piriform could look at the open source code for CrystalDiskInfo and enhance Speccy so that Speccy can also analyze all attached USB hard drives. This would be splendid enhancement to Speccy.

     

    Best regards,

     

    --GTP

  15. The CPU temp (shown by the Gigabyte utility) can't be lower than the system temperature unless you have a liquid chilled or Peltier CPU cooler attached to the CPU. A CPU with a really good heatsink and cooling fan should (as seen by Speccy) run only 5 to 10 C warmer than the overall system temp inside the computer case. I think that Speccy is reporting the correct CPU temp and that the Gigabyte utility is not.

  16. As I remember, there are normal-looking Internet Explorer-generated files in those folders that are there both before and after cleaning. For instance, in the Cookies folder in the location in my post above, there are multiple files with names like "CBWTOP9.txt" (I made this up from memory) with file sizes listed as ~1kb, and the ubiquitous "index.dat" file. The History and Temporary Internet Files folders have the file types expected there also.

     

    Yep. That is correct. What happens is that, even after cleaning, Windows automatically generates new "default" history files which essentially are either extremely small or blank. This only occurs in the History.IE5 and Content.IE5 folders.

  17. McAfee has a long history of snafus which deleted user files and data. Two of those incidents, one a few years back and the other several years ago, were major incidents. Years ago I stopped using McAfee since their AV product horribly slowed down my computers. I agree as well that Criky18 is right. No AV product should be able to be brought to its knees simply by deleting one simple file. Moreover, it is mind blowing that McAfee would allow the user or any other process to delete a log file which is critical for McAfee knowing the update status of the software itself.

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