pwillener

PC Decrapifier is made exactly for that - http://www.pcdecrapifier.com/

You could try a System Restore to a date before the whole thing started. System Restore will restore your system files (including the registry) to the exact state they were when the system restore point was taken.

You don't need to remove the Flash Player plugin (Firefox, Chrome, ...) before installing the new one. The ActiveX for Internet Explorer should be uninstalled however, as the installer does not always remove the old OCX version.

Do not confuse Java (RTE) and Java Script. These have nothing in common except the name.

There are many uses for it, e.g. Secunia OSI, or many other online scanners.

Place a shortcut to the programs in your (or All Users) Startup folder.

Yes, that would be amazing! But it would also run for a (very) long time if you have vast amounts of files on your computer. I personally would rather have this as a separate tool, and I can find quite a number of those via Google.

The 1606 error indicates some sort of registry corruption, which CCleaner may not be able to fix. You don't specify the full message text, so it's difficult to suggest a solution, but you may want to have a look at this article http://support.microsoft.com/kb/886549. If it's any of these environment variables (like %APPDATA%) appearing in your message, then this will fix it. Alternatively you can use the Windows Installer CleanUp Utility to remove the recalcitrant Adobe programs. Don't throw away CCleaner just because it didn't help with your problem; it still does a great job of cleaning up unneeded stuff from your computer. If you continue to have problems with Adobe products, you may get more expert help in the appropriate Adobe forums http://forums.adobe.com/index.jspa/

I - a long-time user of CCleaner - have never used the registry cleaning portion of it. I simply do not believe in "registry cleaning". The Windows registry is a database with a lot of entries. Some may be redundant, some may be obsolete, some may be unneeded, and some may even be conflicting in one way or another. But cleaning these entries out will not make any difference to Windows' performance, nor will it save a lot of space on your HD (a few KB perhaps). I am one that just leaves the registry alone, unless something really needs to be fixed. And then I will do it manually. Whatever I do to the registry, I will never start it without taking a full registry backup first, using ERUNT.

I don't know - I don't see any install dates; either on CCleaner, nor in Add/Remove Programs...?

What is the file name of that backup? What do you get on the right-click menu?

Can you check the Task Manager's Processes tab, and see if there is anything running that could make the system run slower, e.g. high CPU usage or I/O activity?

ERUNT can only restore what it had (manually) backed up previously.

Speccy says: Operating System MS Windows XP Professional 32-bit SP3 CPU Intel Pentium 4 Northwood 0.13um Technology RAM 1.0GB Dual-Channel DDR @ 159MHz 2.5-3-3-7 Motherboard Dell Computer Corp. 0U1324 (Microprocessor) Graphics Plug-and-Pay Monitor on NVIDIA GeForce4 MX 440 with AGP8X (Microsoft Corporation) 64MB NVIDIA GeForce4 MX 440 with AGP8X (Microsoft Corporation) (nVidia) Hard Drives 120GB Western Digital WDC WD1200JB-75CRA0 (IDE) Optical Drives NEC DVD+RW ND-1100A Audio SoundMAX Integrated Digital Audio Do you need the detail specs? Unfortunately this forum does not allow upload of Speccy snapshot files as attachments. P.S. funny that Speccy (1.00.108) wouldn't list the network adapter (Intel? PRO/1000 MT Network Connection).

An additional point: the idea behind this "phone home" feature was to ensure that people install the latest available version. In my case, and other systems that don't have an Internet connection, this has exactly the opposite effect: I was made to install an older version.

You think it wouldn't do it in Safe Mode? I circumvented the problem by downloading v2.28 from a 3rd-party site. Still, I think there should be an install option, either to check on the install panel, or run it with something like /nophonehome .

I am trying to install CCleaner v2.29 on a computer that has lost its Internet connection. I know about the "phone home" feature in the new version, but this is preventing me from completing the install! When it comes to 'Checking system and updates..' it just hangs in there; nothing moves. How do I install CCleaner on a system with no Internet connection?

It looks like you may have gotten a corrupted download. I just downloaded and installed CCleaner 2.25 on Windows 7, and it showed a correct digital signature: It installed fine, and it ran fine. If you have any other applications that wouldn't run, you can always run them in compatibility mode. I think that there is compatibility back to Windows 95. Windows 7 should be able to run just about anything.

Windows XP-SP3 CCleaner 2.25.1025 When running the new CCleaner for the first time, it popped a message that says the Recycle Bin on one partition is corrupt This is a partition that contains only one single file: the page file. The file system is NTFS 3.1, and the cluser size is 64KB. When running CHKDSK /F during reboot on this partition, it finds and fixes some errors, but when I run CCleaner again, the same error pops up. I have no guarantee that this is caused by the new version of CCleaner, as I had some different problems on my C: drive today. In order to help determine if this is indeed caused by the new CCleaner version, I would like to install the previous version, which gave me no problems. Question(s): can I "downgrade" CCleaner 2.25 to 2.24, without uninstalling? if I uninstall CCleaner 2.25, will my settings be preserved?

Change the startup type to 'Manual'.

Yes, I sometimes encounter near-total lockup situations when debugging very large apps with Visual Studio. It can take hours for the Task Manager to pop up, and another hour or so to terminate the VS process. I will give it a try...

Another option to remove uninstallable items is by using the Windows Installer CleanUp Utility.

I do not have this problem with Firefox 3.5.1. What version of CCleaner are you using?

A System Restore will restore the registry to the date selected. A very simple and proven registry backup application is ERUNT.

Thank you for pointing out the icon difference! I have just updated my desktop icon, and it looks much more firefoxy now