GoneToPlaid

Speccy 1.14.288 also frequenly crashes on my XP SP3 machine. The previous version did not, and I kind of wish that I had not deleted it. 288 seems to crash and either display nothing at all when analysing, or sometimes displays an error code and an error message under the RAM section.

I would like to see another optional check box labeled "Only delete files in Windows Temp folders older than the last OS startup." I am surprised that CCleaner doesn't have this option since the system uptime value can be used to determine if temp files are older than the last time Windows was started up or rebooted.

CheckPlaces is another Firefox add-on which can check and update Firefox's stored favicons.

Do you recall if at any point while using your older hard drive, there was either a power glitch or a sudden power outage while the hard drive could have been writing data to the disk? If so, then what can happen is that the drive heads are momentarily still writing data to the disk while at the same time the sudden loss of power is causing the drive heads to swing to the head parking position. The result can be a sector or sectors in which the factory low level formatted sector header information has been overwritten with corrupt data, and the sector or sectors will permanently show up as bad sectors which have been reallocated. Thus, the drive is perfectly fine and is not failing at all, but S.M.A.R.T. still has a log of the reallocated sector(s). A true sign of a failing drive would be seeing increasing values for the reallocation sector count. If you don't, then the drive is fine.

For the past few months but very rarely my computer was rebooting after momentarily displaying the dreaded BSOD. I didn't bother to really think about it since it happened so rarely, but finally one day after the computer rebooted I immediately ran Speccy. Speccy threw an error when testing my computer's RAM. So I powered off the computer, unplugged it and opened the case, and removed and then reseated the RAM. Presto! That solved the issue and the very rare BSOD has not occurred again in over a month now. Another issue in which Speccy helped. The Windows Event Viewer was occasionally logging Event ID 51 error messages related to hard drive I/O. But in Speccy I noticed that all of my hard drives and CPU seemed to be running at somewhat higher temperatures versus what I remembered them normally running at. It turns out that one of the two fans inside the power supply had failed. I replaced the failed fan, the Event 51 error messages no longer are occasionally logged in the Event Viewer, and Speccy now reports temperatures which are lower and in line with what I remembered Speccy reporting months ago. What can I say? Speccy definitely is a very handy program to have on a computer.

Group the three 4 GB sticks together into slots 1, 2 and 3. Then test that setup. If there are no issues, install three of the 1 GB sticks into slots 4, 5 and 6. Then test this setup with the total of 15 GB of memory. If you now run into issues with the 1 GB sticks installed, remove all sticks, put the 1 GB sticks into slots 1 through 3 and the 4GB sticks into slots 4 through 6. If this configuration still causes problems then there is a compatibility issue between the new 4 GB sticks and the older 1 GB sticks, then your only option is to install the 4 GB sticks back into slots 1 through 3 and not use any of the 1 GB sticks in the computer.

Yep. The blame falls on your friend since "Saved Passwords" is rather obvious as to its meaning and if it wasn't obvious to him, then he shouldn't have checked it. Fortunately Firefox passwords are saved in a single file. By chance do you have a backup of your computer from which you could restore that single file? Another option is to use System Restore to roll back your computer to a date and time before your buddy decided to overdo it with CCleaner.

I think that it is best to keep Internet Explorer listed where it is since IE is so heavily integrated into Windows that it actually is a part of the OS.

Always create a System Restore point before proceeding with the following which may resolve the issue. Network drivers and graphics chipset drivers are two types of hardware drivers which generally should be updated using updated driver versions straight from the network card or graphics card websites. Why? Because usually you will find later driver versions which fix reported bugs, but the manufacturer (especially if the graphics or network card or chipsets are older models) in many cases may not bother to go through the process of getting the drivers certified by Microsoft. Such is the case, for example, with the network and graphics drivers for my four year old motherboard. The latest certified graphics driver has a bug, but the latest graphics driver straight from the graphics chipset manufacturer's website isn't certified yet resolves the graphics bug. So in a nutshell, searching for and trying the latest version of the ATI driver may resolve your issue, but be sure to create that System Restore point first before you remove the current graphics driver and install whatever the latest graphics driver is that you find on the ATI website.

I recommend uninstalling Speccy, then downloading it again and installing it again to see if that resolves the issue.

Convention is to list sound cards first, followed by other devices with audio capabilities such as a modem.

Modern CPUs are capable of speed throttling in order to greatly reduce power consumption when the CPU is mostly idle. Power management in Windows XP and 7, when set to any mode other than Always On, enables power management features for the CPU. Laptop, notebook and netbook manufacturers may also implement CPU power management options either in BIOS or via proprietary utilities installed on the computer.

Hi Tonmeister, Just a thought, but the issue might be related to possibly having an older version of MSI installed on the XP partition. Have you tried updating MSI and then reinstalling Speccy?

Hi Lucas, Have you uninstalled or installed any programs within the past couple of days? If not, then your best bet is to reboot into Safe Mode and then do a System Restore using a restore point which is no older than the past day or so before you deleted those entries using CCleaner. Note that before doing this and if there are any important new or modified documents or files which you have created on your computer in the past couple of days, first put copies of those files in a directory called C:\TEMP. Why? System Restore ignores temporary directories and isn't supposed to wipe out any temporary directory contents when you restore to an earlier point in time. In any event, this gives you an alternative option to resolve your issue, but I prefer that you first simply try reinstalling the programs in order to recreate the Add or Remove Program entries.

Hi Dan, I'm not sure, but I would guess that you have checkmarked Temporary Internet Files under CCleaner's Internet Explorer options? That might explain why the site favicons disappear if you run CCleaner while you have IE opened and running. I would recommend running CCleaner only when your web browsers are closed in order to avoid the issue you describe.

NOTE: PIRIFORM STAFF AND FORUM MODERATORS SHOULD REVIEW AND EDIT/REORDER THE FOLLOWING INFORMATION IN ORDER TO ASSURE ITS ACCURACY. OTHERWISE AND UNTIL THIS IS DONE AND ONCE THIS MESSAGE HEADER IS REMOVED BY SAID PIRIFORM STAFF OR FORUM MODERATORS, THEN THE FOLLOWING INFORMATION IS WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED, AND IS FOR INFORMATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY. Piriform staff or moderators will not be editing or modifying this post as it would imply that it was to be followed and had been approved by them. The post below reflects the poster's thoughts only on how to conduct registry cleaning. Hi everyone, I do have some recommendations with regards to using CCleaner to clean the registry: If you are not familiar with the registry and are nervous about using CCleaner to clean your computer's registry, then it is a good idea to create a System Restore point just before you run CCleaner to clean your computer's registry. And of course you should let CCleaner export those registry entries to a REG file before you let CCleaner remove them. Don't clean the registry if you suspect that your computer is infected with a virus and especially if you think that your computer is infected with malware. Why? Because security apps or removal tools for specific malware threats might not be able to fully undo the malware's damage to the registry if CCleaner has deleted specific keys. A note about how CCleaner's registry cleaner works. CCleaner cleans the registry by using "tunnel down" approach. This means that CCleaner initially examines the more root or higher up keys in the registry for obvious issues. Once those keys are "cleaned" or removed, a subsequent CCleaner registry scan will now tunnel down and find other keys, related to the now removed registry keys, which should be removed. In other words, CCleaner is pretty smart in that it doesn't and won't try to clean everything at once. CCleaner basically throws up a "Stop" sign when it finds invalid higher up registry keys which need to be cleaned first. Once those keys are fixed, then a subsequent scan with CCleaner will tunnel down further in the registry to find related registry keys which now can be removed. I always run CCleaner's "Cleaner" button scan in order to remove temporary files and other junk from the computer. Let's say you just installed a program. The installer most likely extracted its contents to temporary files and then these temporary files were executed in order to install the program. Once the new program installation is done and the computer has been rebooted if requested or recommended by the installer, then these temporary files are no longer needed and are just taking up space on your computer's hard drive. Thus, click the "Cleaner button" and get rid of the temporary files first, and then click on CCleaner's "Registry" button and scan the registry. The first thing you should notice will be registry entries which have the word or part of the word "temp" in the path. Those are registry entries which are pointing to those now non-existing temporary files. Obviously those entries are safe to remove since the program installer's temporary files no longer exist on your computer. Have a close look at the registry entries which CCleaner wants to remove. Are some of those registry entries obviously referring to a program which you no longer have installed on your computer? If so then of course those entries are safe to remove. If you are not sure about the entry listed in CCleaner, simply right-click on the entry to view where it is located in the registry. You likely will find that it is indeed under a registry key with the uninstalled program's name or the program vendor's name. It should be relatively straightforward for you to determine that it is indeed safe to remove those entries. If you are really new to using CCleaner's registry cleaner, then you might want to start off by cleaning only certain things first since CCleaner might present what appears to be a daunting list of invalid registry entries which should be removed, and then progress further. Under the registry cleaning options, uncheck everything. Now let's see what CCleaner finds when you progressively select specific registry items to examine: Checkmark Unused File Extensions, Fonts, Help Files, Run At Startup, Start Menu Ordering, and MUI Cache Scan and then zap them since these are very simple things for CCleaner to properly check. Now checkmark Obsolete Software Scan and see what is found, if anything. Note that some software programmers occasionally do create registry keys with either nothing under them or with seemingly unimportant information under them. Its a kind of security trick which is sometimes used in order to make sure that the software was legitimately installed by the software's registered owner. CCleaner should find, at most, only a few entries. Simply right-click on each entry in order to see where it is located in the registry and if you recognize a program name or vendor name for software which you know is presently installed on your computer. If this is the case, then in CCleaner you should right-click on the entry and create an exclusion for that particular registry entry. After several years of using CCleaner I have only come across two or three programs for which I have needed to do this. Thus it would be very rare that you would actually have to create an exclusion in CCleaner. 99% of the time you can simply let CCleaner zap any entries it finds in this category. Now checkmark Installer A scan with CCleaner will now report any invalid junk found which is related to MSI. Sometimes a program's uninstaller doesn't work correctly and the user is forced to manually uninstall a program. Or sometimes an installer for a program for whatever reason doesn't successfully install a program. The result is invalid installation entries in MSI, and this is what CCleaner looks for. CCleaner simply cleans up the MSI entries without actually affecting the installed programs on your computer. Zap the invalid entries. If somehow and later on you discover that you can't uninstall a particular program because it isn't listed under Add or Remove Programs, simply reinstall the program, reboot, and then you should be able to uninstall it -- unless of course there is some sort of inherent problem with the program's installer or uninstaller. An example of how this issue and invalid MSI entries might occur is after upgrading Windows 9X to Windows XP or Vista, or upgrading XP or Vista to Windows 7, but the user didn't first run Microsoft's upgrade adviser in order to find and uninstall programs which will be incompatible with the OS once the upgrade is done. Likewise Microsoft's upgrade adviser might not identify every program which could be incompatible. In any event and after the upgrade was completed, the user might find that they can't uninstall the older and incompatible program since the uninstaller simply won't run or since the upgrade process literally zapped the program's installer and/or uninstaller! Thus these are the types of issues which CCleaner looks for. Zap them. Now checkmark Applications and Application Paths and scan for issues This is another pretty simple thing for CCleaner to check. If you manually moved an application's installed location, at least CCleaner will show you what registry keys you need to edit in order to (hopefully) get the application working correctly! Yet computer users usually don't do silly things like moving folders under Program Files around to different locations on their computer's hard drive. So it is pretty darned safe bet to simply let CCleaner zap any erroneous entries it finds under this category. Now checkmark Missing Shared DLLs and then scan for issues If CCleaner lists registry entries for missing shared DLLs, then those are safe to remove unless for some reason you manually moved those DLLs to a different location! Nobody would do that unless they were trying to mess up their computer. Any missing shared DLL entries, if they list a full path to the DLL and the DLL's name, are safe to remove since CCleaner could not find the DLL on your computer at the specified location. In other words, the DLL is gone. This can happen if for example a user simply deleted an installed program's folder rather than running the program's uninstaller in order to remove the program or if the program's uninstaller was poorly coded. In any event, it normally is quite safe to clean these entries -- but there is ONE EXCEPTION, SO READ THE FOLLOWING CAREFULLY: If for some reason CCleaner simply shows a single entry for the following registry key [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\SharedDlls] yet shows no data or description for the problem, then it is because a program's installer or uninstaller has erroneously changed this key's default value, which should be a string value from empty or "Value not set" to another type of value such as a dword value of 0xffffffff. The installer for one version of Eudora does this, and this is a bug in the installer, and you need to manually fix this issue in your computer's registry. Right-click on the entry in CCleaner and go to it in the registry. In the registry editor's left pane "SharedDlls" should be highlighted. Now in the right pane look at the data for the "(Default)" entry. I bet that it is saying something other than "value not set". Right-click on "(Default)" and click on Delete. That should then restore the data for "(Default)" to "(value not set)". Alrighty. You are done fixing that issue! Close the registry editor and then click the Scan for Issues button again in CCleaner. Now everything should be fine, unless CCleaner now actually finds any missing shared dll entries which should be removed. But note that now CCleaner for each entry will display both the type of problem as well as the associated data for the erroneous entries. Zap them, but only if CCleaner is showing both the type of problem as well as the data for each listed entry. Now checkmark ActiveX and Class Issues Scan for issues and see what CCleaner reports. Sometimes security software will zap unsafe ActiveX controls yet not remove the registry entries for that ActiveX control from your computer's registry. Sometimes a user will manually delete the ActiveX control. I've done this once or twice, particularly with regards to browser toolbars or programs which when uninstalled don't always remove their ActiveX controls. The result is that the registry now contains information for a now non-existent ActiveX control. Let CCleaner zap these invalid ActiveX entries. Similar issues apply for Class Issues. Again, let CCleaner zap any invalid entries. If CCleaner can't find the programs associated with the software class, then those programs no longer exist on your computer. Zap them. This is one of those categories in which CCleaner might find deeper related issues once you have zapped the initial invalid registry entries and then run another CCleaner scan. So have CCleaner scan the registry again once you have zapped the invalid entries shown in the first CCleaner scan. That way CCleaner can now tunnel down deeper into the registry and then find other invalid registry keys related to those now zapped ActiveX and and Class Issues. Now checkmark Type Libraries Scan for issues and let CCleaner zap any invalid registry entries that it finds. Well, there you have it! If this was your first time using CCleaner to clean your computer's registry, then you now have completed the process in smaller and easier to understand steps. After completing all of the above, every Registry Integrity category in CCleaner should have a checkmark next to it since you have now scanned and cleaned each of those categories. Now run a final additional scan. It should report no errors. If anything is reported, zap it and rescan again. If that same thing still is reported, add it to CCleaner's exclusion list since obviously a current program is immediately recreating that registry entry. Reboot your computer and of course after the successful reboot, create a new System Restore Point and give it a name such as "Registry cleaned. All is well." From now on you can simply opt to leave everything checkmarked under the registry cleaning options since in the future the list of erroneous registry entries produced by CCleaner will be relatively short -- unless you have uninstalled a bunch of programs or ActiveX controls (perhaps related to browser toolbars which lots of free software seem to like to merrily install on your computer) or have done a bunch of Windows Automatic Updates which may have updated core software such as .NET framework, before once again running CCleaner. In other words, its a good idea to run CCleaner after uninstalling a few programs and rebooting. That way CCleaner will quickly find leftover entries from those removed programs and the list of erroneous registry entries will be really short and obviously related to the uninstalled programs.

Hi everyone, I am in the process of rebuilding my Windows XP OS from scratch. I have done a fresh XP install on a second hard drive in my computer so that I can slowly install all of my programs and files while at the same time simply being able to go into BIOS in order to boot from the other hard drive which has my current XP installation, programs and data. Anyway, I came across a very interesting registry bug caused by Eudora's installer when I upgraded the new Eudora 7.0.1.0 installation to the more recent Eudora 7.1.0.9 installation. It is possible that the registry issue was caused by me immediately uninstalling Eudora 7.0.1.0 when I realized that I had chosen to install it to a different default directory in my new XP setup compared to how it is installed on my current XP setup. Anyway, and in a nutshell, Eudora's installer or maybe its uninstaller changed the Default value under: [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\SharedDlls] from (Value not set) to a dword value of ffffffff When I ran CCleaner and scanned the registry for errors, CCleaner's only "error" was for HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\SharedDlls, but CCleaner didn't list any data -- only this registry key. CCleaner's error message was "Missing shared dll" or whatever. Needless to say, I figured that CCleaner might delete the entire key and all of the values under it which of course were present in the registry. So instead I deleted the Default value under this key so that Default was now once again showing (Value not set) in the registry. I then rebooted and scanned the registry again with CCleaner and CCleaner reported no errors. So is this a potential issue which CCleaner needs to watch out for? Would CCleaner have blown out the above key and all the stored values of shared DLLs listed under this key? I exported the key to a reg file. A condensed version of the reg file is shown further below. As you will see, Eudora's installer was the last thing to add info under the SharedDlls key and that apparently Eudora's installer is what also changed the default value for this key to ffffffff. Anyway, I figured that this and similar are things which CCleaner should watch for since installers, uninstallers, viruses or malware might do the same thing. Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00 [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\SharedDlls] "C:\\Program Files\\Common Files\\Microsoft Shared\\Triedit\\dhtmled.ocx"=dword:00002710 "C:\\Program Files\\Common Files\\Microsoft Shared\\Triedit\\triedit.dll"=dword:00002710 "C:\\Program Files\\Common Files\\System\\OLE DB\\MSDAIPP.DLL"=dword:00000001 "C:\\Program Files\\Common Files\\System\\OLE DB\\MSDAPML.DLL"=dword:00000001 "C:\\Program Files\\Common Files\\Microsoft Shared\\Web Folders\\MSONSEXT.DLL"=dword:00000001 "C:\\Program Files\\Common Files\\Microsoft Shared\\Web Folders\\MSOWS409.DLL"=dword:00000001 "C:\\Program Files\\Common Files\\Microsoft Shared\\Web Folders\\PUBPLACE.HTT"=dword:00000001 blah, blah, blah ... "C:\\Program Files\\Common Files\\InstallShield\\Professional\\RunTime\\09\\01\\Intel32\\iKernel.dll"=dword:00000002 "C:\\Program Files\\Common Files\\InstallShield\\Professional\\RunTime\\09\\01\\Intel32\\Setup.dll"=dword:00000002 "C:\\Program Files\\Common Files\\InstallShield\\Professional\\RunTime\\09\\01\\Intel32\\DotNetInstaller.exe"=dword:00000002 "C:\\Program Files\\Common Files\\InstallShield\\Professional\\RunTime\\09\\01\\Intel32\\iscript.dll"=dword:00000002 "C:\\Program Files\\Common Files\\InstallShield\\Professional\\RunTime\\09\\01\\Intel32\\ctor.dll"=dword:00000002 "C:\\Program Files\\Common Files\\InstallShield\\Professional\\RunTime\\09\\01\\Intel32\\iuser.dll"=dword:00000002 "C:\\Program Files\\Common Files\\InstallShield\\Professional\\RunTime\\09\\01\\Intel32\\IGDI.dll"=dword:00000002 "C:\\Eudora\\LDAPinit.ini"=dword:00000002 "C:\\Eudora\\deudora.ini"=dword:00000002 "C:\\Eudora\\eudora.fts"=dword:00000002 "C:\\Eudora\\eudora.gid"=dword:00000002 "C:\\Eudora\\finger.ini"=dword:00000002 "C:\\Eudora\\ph.ini"=dword:00000002 @=dword:ffffffff Apparently Eudora's installer, since its shared dll entries are listed last and since the new Default key value is ffffffff, is the culprit. I wasn't to keen on testing whether or not CCleaner would have blown out the registry key and all of the data under the key. I still love using CCleaner though!

Others have mentioned providing more info related to the OS (software key, et cetera). One thing which I think should also be shown is the machine's Computer Security Identifier (SID) since machines with identical SIDs can cause a variety of problems on a network. Mark Russinovich of Sysinternals recently wrote an article claiming that SID doesn't matter and Sysinternals (Microsoft) has officially retired their free NewSID program. Yet dozens upon dozens of people immediately replied to Mark with specific examples of how having two or computers with identical SIDs do cause various problems not only on a network, but also with some software programs as well. Thus displaying the machine's SID could be very useful for IT departments in resolving issues related to two or more cloned machines having the same SID.

That may be due to your motherboard's BIOS? I think that my mb BIOS can report sata drives either as scsi or ide, depending on how I configure the BIOS (raid function or no raid function). Note that I could be wrong, but that is what I recall when fiddling with the settings months ago.

Speccy reports all of my HDs which support S.M.A.R.T., but then again I also have S.M.A.R.T. support for these HDs enabled in my computer's BIOS. Maybe check your computer's BIOS settings for each hard drive?