mta

instead of the 2 120mm's at the front, i put 1 on top and 1 on the bottom and found it had no more noise than any other PC. granted, i had seen (heard?) quieter units but it was by no means loud. i only had it for a few hours while it was being built and tested and haven't been back to see it since but if you do find the noise level unacceptable, good, quiet fans that do 7dB's, and 700 RPM are about $30. swapping the fan would not put me off that case, it looks pretty cool fully setup.

well, i've decided to bite the bullet and remove JRE from my PC. (the exploit apparently only effects JDK but i don't know enough on java to know how similar JRE & JDK are and what they share) it's the only way i'll tell what i use that in turn needs java. not just this forum, but i've never come across a topic like java that gets to everyone as passionately as this one.

-1 the vast majority of enteries are of no help to the vast number of systems CC runs on.

top left 'banner' of CCleaner shows the version and some relevant system info. what about on the right side, say, show some cleaning stats, like Date Last Used and Number of Times Ran and Total Bytes Cleaned. might be useful to know how long it has been since you last ran the program. same for Defraggler, although it has no 'banner', maybe put it in the Help, About menu.

fair enough, my lips are sealed.

@hazel, what, not even mention the software they can use?

nothing is 100% certain, if it was, there wouldn't be this forum. remove the word temporary and the statement unimportant junk is definitely true - that's what it does, just the junk, temp or not. if the software has already been uninstalled (bad or not) removing the remaining should cause no more harm as the software won't work anyway. also use winapp2.ini if you aren't already, as it goes that bit further with removing left-over crap.

the System Restore would not have recovered personal files, it's just not what it does. from your statement that some Start, All Programs links were missing, it reminds me of a malware i've seen recently, a few times. check MSCONFIG (since you are pc savvy, i'll skip the nitty-gritty) and see what is getting started. i'd be doing this in Safe Mode. Your Docs may still there, just hidden, so check the My Doc Read-Only and Hidden attributes aren't set. this malware i've seen hides your files and doesn't delete them. same for all your folders, check those attributes. do yourself a big favour and run Anti-MalwareBytes. i've used this before for this situation with great sucess. please report back any news.

i've never used BitDefender, but i'd be starting with a search for bitdefender or quarantine. which brings me to the obvious fact that i've never done it before, or for that matter, ever needed to recover files out of quarantine. but the theory at least sounds like your next step. on the other PC, the 'new' trail of BD hopefully won't have smarts that check the integrity of the quarantine folder; like a lock file or index file, if so, you'll be back to square one. this suggestion is purely speculative, trying to get you over this hurdle. so the theory is to find the current quarantine location, copy that to the some location on the other PC and fire up BD and cross your fingers. i see BD has it's own forum http://forum.bitdefender.com/ so that would probably be your next best option.

so would you say HD Tune Pro is better than most?

just a thought. if you have access to another PC, reinstall the AV on it, to get the trail period going again. then see if you can copy the quarantine folder over to the other PC just to see if you regain access.

i do mine about every 2 months. even then i don't do a full defrag, i let DF show the file list, then i sort based on the Fragments column and select all files > 10 frags. then i re-sort based on the Size column and defrag all files > 10,000 KB. in other words, i just do the biggest files with the most fragments. all the little tossers i don't care about. i have Sys Restore off, Hibernation file off and a small PageFile, so they aren't a concern either. i've always thought the amount of time doing the defrag shouldn't outway the performance gained, otherwise, what is the point. for me, weekly is too often, you would see little to no benefit and risk shortening the hard drive life. if you do see a benefit, you need to sort out the file system, like trying to get the most used folders/files to the end of the drive.

same here, thought the same, that i wasn't signed in. excellent - i'm not going crazy !

Don't be stupid - never even crossed my mind. i'm sure Nergal and definitely for me, were just saying that your point to take it in to someone was a valid option albeit a potentially expensive one.

@keatah, just wondering how much stock you put in S.M.A.R.T values. i thought they were 'indicators' more than reliable values. at least that was the impression i formed when the technology was first coming in and hence, i've sort of treated those figures with a grain of salt. for example, i had a PC that booted fine for years but the startup screen always said S.M.A.R.T has detected failing drive (or whatever that message was) mind you, my NAS i use for backups has said that in the past and i replaced the 'failing' drive lickity-split. (who don't much around when it comes to backups) Edit: sorry Hazel, just saw your post after i posted this. i clicked on the star to see 'my thread' but it took me to #20 to which i thought i was replying as the last post then realised there was this newer page. that's happened before to me when clicking on that asterick, haven't nailed it down yet. suspect a slow web connection.

on the assumption your HD has had it's day in the sun and it's all downhill from here, please make sure you 1) are doing backups and 2) are doing them more regularly knowing you now have a potentially unreliable HD.

system files would be my guess as well, hibernation file, pagefile, restore points, just to name the most obvious. have you tried running DF with Stop VSS option ticked and Exclude restore point file & Exclude hibernation file options both ticked? your 48% fragmentation is the ratio of bytes of frag'd files to used bytes of disk space.

just found another nice feature. i've always disliked the way Win7/Vista changed their sort method in Windows Explorer, a change from the good old XP method of doing it. XYplorer let's you go back, old school style ! small feature i know, but good to have it back

only been playing just over a week now. Pros so far; tabbed exploring (should give SuperFast a smile) Catalog View, you can setup your Favourite locations inbuilt TeraCopy equivalent (i was using teracopy, but this seems to do the same inbuilt) Still playing but I do hear the main point, going to another PC and having to go back to the tried and true Windows Explorer will be a downer.

I've just discovered the joys of XYplorer and I must say, it has replaced the old Windows Explorer admirably (so far). It reminds me of what you could once do with XTree Gold (how many of us can put their arms up there) So firstly, I was wondering if anybody has any better/favourite file managers? And secondly, any feature (good or bad) that XYplorer has that you may have come across? Thanks.

probably more a Recuva thread, but can you provide more info. a screenshot, an error message, something to help us go on.

the theory may be nice, but if by storage arrays, you refer to SSD's, then I think you hit the old brick wall, "limit excessive writes to a SSD". plus i don't think it would be in the scope of a defrag program to do that, more of a cleaner program, say CCleaner.

Firstly welcome!, but i'm sure you are about to get bombarded with repsonses, most negative, concerning SSD's and defragging. it really boils down to a few simple points. SSD's don't benefit from defragging. Excess I/O should be avioded. If you really want to - knock yourself out. this topic gets raised a bit and the discussion is usually interesting

by your self-acclaimed 'lack of knowledge', it could be as simple as your missing folder is hidden, and that solution is easy to fix. but if you want to take it to someone, that would probably be the quickest solution. if you would still like to plug away at this, myself or any other forum member will always be here.... good luck.

well, if nothing else, at least you have your data backed up. i would suggest the Let Me Choose path, and manually specify everything you want backed up. i never let something else decide what i want backed up. at least that way, come Restoration Day, there will only be me to blame if something is missed. after the Let Me choose screen, the next ones allow you to tick what you want included, obviously you pick the Docs, Pics, Music etc folders, but also don't forget to find your Contacts, email store, signatures, stationary, desktop, templates folders. so it now sounds like you can see the folder in Windows Explorer but not in MS Backup - is this correct? if you can't see it any where, do you have the folder option on to show hidden files, folders and drives?