nukecad

I agree that we seem to have digressed from Legandarysnake's issue, I also apologies for that. @legendarysnake please ignore our debate (unless you want to read it) - how are you getting on now? Yes I realise the the blocks in the drive map are not actual disc clusters, it was just a shorthand to refer to them like that. (Slack language I agree). I'll just quickly comment about fragmentation percentage possibly growing when you consolidate a drive. It isn't usual to see it happen with the default 'Defrag', but it can happen. I've seen it happen myself on a 'messy' drive, and we occasionally see it in questions asked on this forum. In Defraggler itself a 'Defrag Freespace' is a consolidation - and it gives you an option to allow it to fragment files or not while it's doing it. (TBH I'm not sure which one a default 'Defrag' does, but from previously asked questions assume that it will allow fragmentation - I guess we'd need one of the dev's to give a definitive answer to that). From the Defraggler documentation:

Well yes I'd say so. Getting all the used clusters into one contiguous piece is consolidation. A 'Cluster' is a specific defined area on a disc, not parts of a fragmented file. A file is fragmented because it's split over one or more disc clusters. For years defragmenters have been doing consolidation, and so that's what people have come to think that defragmenting is. That's not exactly wrong though - consolidation is 'defragmenting whole clusters on a disc' as opposed to 'defragmenting individual files'. One is concerned with clusters, the other with files. So both are technically 'defragmenting', but they are doing two very different things. Two things that can sometimes be at cross purposes*. Most defragging apps have a drive map, people like to watch as it moves things about. It wouldn't be as dynamic if it was just defragmenting the files. You can see that if you do a files only defrag in Defraggler. The blocks (clusters) will change colour but will only ocassionaly seem to 'move' as an emptied one turns white or a newly used one turns red/blue. (of course they also turn green/yellow as the data in them is being processed). We occasionally see someone asking how to get "all the files/clusters at the start of the drive with no gaps", which is the holy grail of consolidation and can hardly ever be achieved. You realy only ever see it on a newly formatted drive. But if you want to try and do that and fill up the clusters so that you are using the least number of clusters possible then you have to fragment some files to fill the clusters completely. *(That's when the % fragmentation shown by defraggler can sometimes go up following the default defrag; because it's fragmented some files to fill up and consolidate some clusters). I totally agree with that too. Unless there has been very heavy usage and thousands of writes/deletes on the drive over time then defragging is not realy needed. It may have been useful back in the days of smaller discs and slower operating systems - particularly in the days of floppy discs when it could take 10 minutes or longer to load a programme from floppy (wasn't unknown to take half an hour to load a game from floppy) - but isn't realy needed these days. In fact I'd say the only real reason most people defrag nowadays is to see a 'pretty' drive map - and if they didn't have a defragmenter in the first place they wouldn't even see a drive map to know if it looked pretty or not. (Which could be another reason why Windows have dropped theirs). As you say, unless your files are scattered all over the disc through heavy use, then in use the difference a consolidation/defrag makes is not going to be noticable at all.

For licence issues you need to contact support. Send an email explaining your problem to support@ccleaner.com However it appears that renewal message has come from Google Play and not from CCleaner, so you may also need to contact Google.

Sorry another essay, the difference between defragmenting/consoldiation is fairly simple once you get your head around it; but it can be complicated to explain because everybody has been using the wrong terms for years. That didn't realy matter until we started getting terabyte drives (and SSDs) for home use, but those have made the difference more important. (TBH spinning HDDs are on the way out for home use, they'll go the same way as 3.5" floppy discs, and then defragmenting/consolidation will become a niche thing for 'old tech' and maybe big servers. That will probably happen quicker than most imagine). I'm not sure just how much of which Windows 'Defrag & Optimise' does for a HDD these days, but most defragmenters will do a consolidation because that's what most users think defragmenting is. It is noticable that the Windows 'Defrag & Optimise' no longer shows a drive map, so no longer shows any consolidation happening on HDDs although I'm sure it still does it. (If you have an SSD then a drive map is meaningless anyway, so that's one reason they may have stopped showing it). Back to your drive: If you have been doing a lot of writing/deleting/moving things about on the disc then a consolidation will take time, but once done shouldn't need doing again for ages. It's mainly when you have deleted things that leaves 'white holes' (free space) scattered about the drive map where those files used to be. Consilidation tries to fill those up again, so that all the white space (free space) is after the data. Again it's not really needed with todays bigger drives, it is something that you wanted in the days of smaller 32GB/64GB drives, but most people prefer a tidy looking drive map so still do it. Consolidating the drive also means there is less chance of new files getting fragmented when you save them. Another thing is that you say you are doing an external drive connected by USB - that's going to take longer than an internal drive connected directly to the motherboard by SATA. Just one of those things, SATA has a faster transfer rate than USB and defragging/consolidation is transfering stuff from the drive to RAM and back again. As for the 'saving' of progress it's actually because the defrag and/or consolidate is done a bit at a time. Enough is read from disc to fill your RAM, and then written back to disc 'tidied up', then more is read to fill the RAM and then written back, and so on. So when you stop it part way through it finishes processing what it has in RAM and writes it back to disc, then clears up any temporary files it had put on the disc, so everything already done stays done. However when you run consolidate again (full defrag) it still has to take another look at what it already consolidated last time, (it doesn't 'remember' what it did last time), but shouldn't have to process it much. The other thing to note is that I believe the % fragmentation reported is just that - the actual fragmentation of the files - and not how much the disc has been consolidated. It's that (confusing) terminology again; it's reporting the file fragmentation not the cluster consolidation status. To put that another way - If you look at the drive map the % fragmented is the red blocks, (clusters with fragmented files in them), Consolidation isn't too bothered about those, it's just trying to fill in the 'white holes'. So if Defraggler is working on consolidating the clusters on the drive it's just moving about the blue and red blocks, and that % fragmented won't change or it may even go higher as Defraggler fragments some files to fit them in to partially filled clusters. (We do get people asking here why running a full defrag has made their % fragmented go up). Don't worry about it, even if you see it increasing, a 'files only' defag will sort it out later. If you do stop the full defrag again then you could do a 'files only' next time to get that % down. Then do an analyze to see what the cluster distribution looks like. If it's still full of 'white holes' then you can go back to full defrag/consolidate again if you still want to try and fill them in.

You need a seperate licence for the Android version. That's because it's only available through the Google Play Store. (So that Google can take a cut).

For security reasons we can't deal with licence key issues on the open forum - you need to contact support. Email them at support@ccleaner.com and explain your problem, they are pretty quick to sort things out. It's best if you use the same email address that you used when purchasing, so that they can quickly identify your order.

To start with how did you abort Defraggler? Is you drive now showing much less space available than before? You can always 'Stop' a defrag if you think it's taking too long - but you should do it properly and after clicking 'Stop' let Defraggler finish what it is currently working on and tidy up before closing it. (If you have aborted defraggler in the wrong way, that is if it was stoppped by force or by a crash, then it may have left a lot of temporary files behind). A 2 TB HDD is going to take a long time to defragment using Defragglers default options. That's just a consequence of todays much larger drives. But keep reading because you can change how you use Defraggler to do things much more quickly. If you have aborted and started again then the standard options are going to take (almost) as long as the first time. That's because the standard options are not just 'defragmenting' files (which has already been done, although there will be some new bits to do), but also 'consolidating' the whole disc - and it's that consolidation that takes the time. I'll try to explain that - Because as said you can speed things up if you know just what defragmentng is, and what Defraggler is doing. To start with it depends on just what you (or the defragmenter app) mean by defragmenting. There are two things that are commonly called 'defragmenting', but they are very different and one takes a lot more resources/time than the other. 'Defragmentation' proper means getting you files into one piece each, so they can be read slightly faster. 'Consolidation' is also commonly called defragmenting and means getting your files into the smallest number of possible clusters on the disc, which may (will) actually fragment the files themselves to 'fit them in' to the smallest number of clusters. That's the one that takes more resources/time, and it's not realy needed on todays larger discs. When most people talk about defragmenting they are actually thinking about consolidation, that's simply because defragmenting software has been (wrongly) calling it that for years, but user needs have changed over time as discs got bigger so the difference between the two is more important now. By default Defraggler does a combination of both consolidation and defragmentation, but you can also specify one or the other. With a large drive it's a good idea to do a full Defrag (defrag & consolidate) once or maybe twice to get the disck in order, but then after that only to do 'file only' defrags. (You might want to do another consolidate when you have done some uninstalling of things). To do a 'file only' defragment in Defraggler: Open defraggler and analyse the drive. Click on 'View Files' or click on the 'Files' tab. Select the tickbox at the top of the list to select everything found. Click on 'Defrag Checked'. That will just defragment the files without trying to consolidate the whole drive. So it will be quicker and use less resources. Note that when doing a files only defrag it is not unusual for it to finish with a 'Defrag Aborted' message. That's because some file(s) have been opened/changed between analyzing and defragmenting, so for safety it has been skipped, the rest of the files have been defragged. Like any tool that can be used in multiple ways what you get out of Defraggler depends on knowing how to use it in the best way for you. In your place I'd let the current run complete, if it hasn't already. Then I'd do a files only defrag so you can see the difference in time taken. Then, if you want to, do an new Ananlyze and post a screenshot of the drive map after doing that so that we can comment on how it looks.

Firstly it depends on what you mean when you say 'defragment' or 'fragments'. Secondly even when you are not using the computer Windows is still doing things, and updating/writing/moving files, in the background. In fact some of Windows 'housekeeping' only happens when the computer is idle, ie. switched on but you are not using the computer. Defragmenters can be programmed to ignore files that have 'less than ## fragments', or files below a certain size, or fragments below a certain size. Sometimes the user can set these limits in the Options/settings. So it's not unusual for different defragmenters to report different things. And as said above, it depends on just what you (or the defragmenter) mean by defragmenting. There are two things that are commonly called 'defragmenting', but they are very different and one takes a lot more resources than the other. 'Defragmentation' proper means getting you files into one piece each, so they can be read slightly faster. 'Consolidation' is also commonly called defragmenting and means getting your files into the smallest number of possible clusters on the disc, which may (will) actually fragment the files themselves. That's the one that takes more resources, it's not realy needed on todays larger discs, and indeed it will take much longer on todays larger discs. (When most people talk about defragmenting they are actually thinking about consolidation, that's simply because the software has been (wrongly) calling it that for years, but user needs have changed over time as discs got bigger so have lots of free space available). By default Defraggler does a combination of both consolidation and defragmentation, but you can also specify one or the other. To do a 'file only' defragment in Defraggler which will use less resources and complete quicker: Open defraggler and analyse the drive. Click on 'View Files' or click on the 'Files' tab. Select the tickbox at the top of the list to select everything found. Click on 'Defrag Checked'. That will just defragment the files without trying to consolidate the whole drive. So it will be quicker and use less resources. Like any tool that can be used in multiple ways what you get out of Defraggler depends on knowing how to use it in the best way for you.

As with Chrome itself, you will need to use an extension/add-on to change the new tab behaviour. In CCleaner Browser go to the Chrome webstore and find the extension you want, then click on 'Add to Chrome' which should add it to the CCleaner browser. There are many extensions to choose from, (and many that do the same thing), eg. for a blank new tab pick from one of these: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/search/blank new tab?_category=extensions The search button is another question. You used to be able to disable it with a 'flag' switch, but AFAIK google removed that switch so users are now stuck with that button.

I doubt that anyone would argue with that.

Do you have an INI file saved for CCleaner? If so then open it in Notepad and check it for any reference to Flash. PS. I note that you also have 'Media Player Classic" listed there. I believe that has a Flashplayer browser plug-in, which may be what is causing CCleaner to think you still have flash? You could also try a manual search of the registry for the word 'flashplayer' (and then maybe for the word 'shockwave').

The first thing I'd think is that there is still some trace of Flash Player left somewhere and CCleaner is picking that trace up. Maybe a file association or something similar? You could try uinstalling/reinstalling CCleaner itself to see if it still picks Flash Player up on the reinstall. If it does then you'll know that there is still some trace of Flash Player somewhere on your machine. Make a note of your settings (or a backup of the 'ini' file) before uninstalling, and note your registered name and key if it's CCleaner Pro. (You'll need to re-register the new install). IMPORTANT - If you have installed CCleaner in a non-standard location, ie. if it isn't in "C:\Program Files\CCleaner", then don't uninstall it. If your CCleaner is not installed at that location then uninstalling it may cause problems

Yes, some options in the IE clearing can be slow or 'sticky' at times. (If I rember correctly the URLs and/or Index sometimes seem to 'stick' for a few seconds). It isn't IE itself that is running and creating the junk in there though. Many Windows and 3rd party apps use the IE temporary storage spaces to put temp files and logfiles - it's always been there, Windows Disk Cleanup clears it when run, so it's just always been a convinent place for anything to put temporary stuff. That's one of the main reasons why IE is still there in Windows, even Windows 11, - because other things are still tied into it and/or still use it's storage spaces. CCleaner itself puts 3 temporary files in "Internet Explorer - Temporary Internet Files" everytime that you open CCleaner, and then cleans them again. So you will always find theres at least 3 to clean in there when you've just opened CCleaner, because CCleaner puts them there: The only things I have ticked in IE these days are: Unless you have actually had IE running then the rest should be empty anyway - Give that setting a go and see if it cures your issue.

Is it just with CCleaner or are other things being slower than usual? Intermittent issues can be a pain to track down. In this case though I suspect it's being intermittent because whatever part is being slow sometimes has nothing in it to be cleaned. The best I can suggest to try and pinpoint what may be slowing things for you is to do the cleaning a bit at a time and see if one bit seems particularly slower than usual. To do that: Right-click on the blue heading of a section and Analyze just that section, then do the next section, and so on through both tabs. If one section seems particularly slow then you can use the same right-click method on the individual ticked options within that section to see if it's a particular one. If nothing shows up using Analyze then try again with an actual clean. Of course when you clean a section then you'll have to wait for more junk to build up before being able to check the individual ticks. (Which is why you do it with an Analyze and not Clean first time round). Or you could skip cleaning the sections and just do each individual tick one at once. Traking things down takes time, patience, and doing things methodically one step at a time, it always does. As an example these shows how you can analyze/clean just the Edge Chromium section, or just one tick:

Health Check or Custom Clean? If it's Custom Clean then can you see at the top of the results window if it seems to be 'sticking' on anything in particular when analyzing or cleaning?

Clever - Make the user's device collect and analyze the data - wonder how much that saves on Google's electricity bills for their data analysis servers? (and so reduces their carbon footprint as a bonus).

100% internet privacy? - Disconnect from the internet. I'm not joking, whatever you do as long as you have an internet connection then it can never be 100% secure. Everything has a risk, even walking down the road, you just do what you can to minimise that risk to an acceptable (to you) level.

Great, thanks for those. First the pop-ups. I don't know why it's doing that when you have it unticked - it looks like the setting may have got stuck on, so I would try ticking the box, close CCleaner, open CCleaner, untick the box again, close CCleaner. Just to see if that gives it a shake to keep the setting you want. Of course you could always simply turn off Smart Cleaning. The discrepancy in the amount of junk to clean will be because Smart Cleaning uses Custom Clean. Custom Clean will find different things to what Health Check finds. It depends on just what you have set Custom Clean to find/clean. Custom Clean can be set to find/clean things that Health Check doesn't touch.

Email to support@ccleaner.com is the best way to resolve licence issues. They are usually pretty quick to help. That expiry date indicates a problem and can happen for a number of reasons, support will be able to to see why it's happening.

No you can't run both at the same time. (But you could run one and then the other). They are quite different, so you should know which one you were using. In Custom Clean the thing that will clear out your current logins and current open tabs is 'Session' for the browser. But as you are talking mainly about hotmail and gmail then I suspect that this may be something to do with the changes that Chrome is currently making to various settings? Hotmail in particular is getting a bit long in the tooth so I'm not sure what the recent/ongoing Chrome changes may be doing with it? The CCleaner developers keep up with such browser changes, but it's always going to be a game of 'they have changed that so we have to change this' and catching up takes time. They usually do very well, but sometimes changes catch everyone on the hop.

Did you use 'Health Check' or 'Custom Clean'? They do different things.

If the time estimated keeps changing then something is still running, so it doesn't seem to be 'stuck'. (TBH I don't take much notice of such 'estimated' timers in anything, estimate is just another word for guess). TB sized drives can take time, the bigger the drive the longer it will take to scan. If it's stopped increasing the 'files found' then that could simply indicate that it's scanning parts of the drive with nothing on there to find, but it still has to scan them byte-by-byte to determine that there is nothing there. I do note that it's now 8 hours since you made this post, so hopefully it's finished scanning by now?

@JudyCochranI have flagged this for staff attention. (To my eye there are a few issues with that email).

@hazelnutI've now posted the original .eml fie and a conversion to PDF in the secure staff area. Because it contains a licence key (whether real or not) I'll remove the copies from here. @muddiedo you by any chance have more than one licence key?

Good to hear you got things back as they were. (Have you checked that your audio is working OK?) I'd suggest that you don't use Driver Updater (any driver updater) again, but of course that's my personal opinion and whether or not you use one is your choice.