mta

what is your make/model of the sound card? knowing that may help identify where it stores its settings that may be getting cleansed by CC.

damned if I know. I've been banging on about this bug for about 2 years. yes, they know about it, and yes from the lack of a official response you can deduce the care factor. ok, they may have more pressing problems what with CC going to hell in a hand basket but it literally takes 1 minute to say "Yep, sorry chaps, we are aware, can't find the cause, don't panic - carry on". if you can't look after your pennies, you'll never manage the pounds.

WHAT !?!? please tell me that is a typo.

one day someone from the Admin team may grace these lonely pages with a word or two, but until then - your guess is as good as mine. all I can add is - they are aware...

g'day jhill and welcome to the forums. it'll skip any browser that it detects as open or running in the background, and for Edge and IE that also relates to anything shared with Microsoft libraries they use between other products; so potentially things like OneDrive, Skype, Defender etc.

check the Program Files folder for CC and delete/rename the updater executable. and for good measure, create some firewall rules.

yes. turn off monitoring, disable auto-updater, create firewall rules, and/or use portable version. it all depends on what you want CC to do for you. what version do you have?

no, they won't move location now unless they get re-fragmented and you run a defrag process again without the 'move to end of drive' selected. if it is some sort of matter of need or urgency, you could copy the file to an external location, delete the source then copy it back to the PC, that'll put it back in the first available space and keep finding the next available spot until the file is fully copied.

in Defraggler, Settings, Options, Defrag tab, is Move large files to end of drive... ticked?

is it safe - yes. is it what you want - only you can say. you will lose some historical data, that may help troubleshoot events but if that's OK, then yes, delete them.

if all CC options are on their default settings, that is the 'safe' cleaning method. you can add INCLUDE's and use winapp2.ini for further deeper cleaning. personally, do no run the reg cleaner process in CC, there just isn't any speed or space value in doing so, apart from it being completely unnecessary. and if you click the Analyse button first (instead of Run Cleaner), you'll be able to go through what will be cleaned and check no sensitive areas will be effected until you can put your faith back into the program.

wasn't the default setting for windows.old set to NOT clean, so unless changed, CC shouldn't have wiped the driver. but yes, as Nergal says, the whole option has now been removed. get the latest Intel driver from here; https://downloadcenter.intel.com/download/27988/Intel-Graphics-Driver-for-Windows-10?product=80939

make sure CC isn't running in the foreground (or background) when trying to update. so start the Task Manager and close all monitoring processes including the emergency updater if running. then try the update again. failing that, try with the PC in Safe Mode. what version are you currently using? what OS?

Or it could be all the lost users haven’t/won’t come back.

g'day laidy and welcome to the forum. can you give an example of one of the file names and the folder it was in? CC doesn't touch personal or system files unless they meet one of its criteria - like they live in a temp folder or have an extension that deems the file to be crap, like .log or .tmp - that sort of thing. sadly, Restore Points won't help you recover personal files and Restore Points only 'restore' a handful of system files - the ones needed to 'rollback' the system after a dodgy driver install, or Windows update, or corrupt Registry, to try and get the system starting again. you can look in the Recycle Bin, but I seem to recall, CC doesn't put them there, it deletes its findings for good. do you have any backups?

misreporting HHDs as SSD's (and vice-versa) has been a long running bug in CC, DF and Speccy. I just use the command defrag c: /L /V now.

@Marotz what makes you think Avast is malware, is it doing something malicious on your PC? have you ran scans both from within Avast and by another independent program, say MalwareBytes, to confirm your PC is clean?

uninstall your current version first. then go into the Program Files folder for CC and delete its contents (keep the .ini file if you have customised settings) download the latest build from here; https://www.piriform.com/ccleaner/builds (or use FileHippo for previous versions) reboot the PC then install CC from your downloaded file. if you need to convert this Free version to the Pro, go to Options > About and enter your license key. if no luck, try the install with the PC in Safe Mode. or try the Slim or Portable builds to see if they work.

I change my USER and SYSTEM %temp% and %tmp% variables and CC cleans them fine. untick those 24 hour boxes to allow CC to clean more recent files. for the two %temp% and %tmp% folders, CC will remove all contents regardless, for other folders it only removes files that meet its criteria; like tmp, log, wer files etc. so your %temp% files probably have stuff left because your 24 hours box is ticked. and your original %temp% folder (c:\users\xxx\appdata\local\temp) still has contents because, despite the name, it is now just a 'normal' folder and will only get cleansed for those file type that trigger CC's rules.

there simply is no need to defrag a SSD due to the technology. the word 'fragmentation' shouldn't even be used with SSD, it is a legacy word leftover from a legacy generation of hardware architecture. was this SSD or C:\ drive? what is the error message you get when accessing the SSD? are you on Windows 10?

for example, certainly don't run the registry cleaner!!!

DF has never the the fastest of it's breed. it's why I never use it to defrag a drive, I just Analyse, sort the Fragments column in Descending order, select the top offenders and just defrag those. then I repeat for the Size column. and by top offenders I mean, those with > 20 frags or those > 20MBs (or whatever rocks your boat)

in CC, Options, Advanced - do you have both the Only delete....older than 24 hours boxes NOT ticked? may explain the current stuff, but not the stuff from 2016. but that could be because you changed the TEMP environment variable away from the default and 1) CC no longer looks there and 2) there may be nothing in there that triggers CC to remove it, like TMP or LOG files. manually delete that folder and start from there and see what accumulates.

maybe an official response from higher up will confirm/deny these things. all us users (just like yourself) can say, based on monitored firewall traffic is, Yes, it still 'phones home'. (but that was never going to stop, just process was changing)

that's the most fragmentation of a drive I think I have ever seen. 4TB drive and 3TB of it are frag'd. that's pretty impressive.