tmeatl

Thank you

AlanB, I'm not suggesting that CCleaner not follow symbolic links that you've created and are using in place of normally located directories, such as your Firefox profiles. They should be transparent to applications and handled only at the OS level. The OS will hand you off to the "real" folder, but as far as the application is concerned, the data is where it originally went to look. That's just basically how symbolic links work, and that is fine. What I'm reporting is a problem where, if you delete a symbolic link and send it to the Recycle Bin, CCleaner will actually follow the links within the Recycle Bin when clearing it out. They shouldn't be treated as symbolic links to follow when they are in a trash can; they should be considered as something similar to a shortcut file on your desktop. If you delete the shortcut and subsequently empty out the Recycle Bin to permanently delete it, you wouldn't want that action to actually delete your program's executable the shortcut was pointing to. Setting ACLs on the symbolic link destinations to protect them from accidental deletion is not a solution to these kinds of problems. It's basically suggesting that you mark everything as read only so you don't accidentally delete anything, ever. Also, developers/moderators, thanks for considering this.

Discovered that if you create a symbolic directory link to another location using the mklink /d command, then delete that symbolic link so that it goes to the Windows Recycle Bin, CCleaner will delete the actual files that the symbolic link points to. Example steps to reproduce, using a NAS located at \\nas. Be sure you are okay with deleting files in the network location specified! Create a symbolic directory link to a network location using the mklink command: mklink /d c:\nastest \\nas\docs Delete the symbolic link directory c:\nastest. Send it to the Windows Recycle Bin Run CCleaner, either by right clicking the Recycle Bin and choosing "Run CCleaner", or by opening the program and Analyzing/Running. Watch all your files located in \\nas\docs disappear before your very eyes! The files are not deleted when you execute a standard Windows empty Recycle Bin command, so this bug is limited to CCleaner's activity.