nukecad

Moved to CCleaner for Mac. It may help anyone answering to known which Mac OS version are you running?

If you follow Nergal's 3-line advice in his signature you will proably be OK, but no guarantees. If you just run Registry Cleaner blithely you will proably be OK, but no guarantees. We do get posts here from people who have messed up their machine by using the Registry Cleaner. Some of them say they have always used it (sometimes weekly) with no problems - until it suddenly is a problem. In many cases they have to Repair or even completely Reinstall Windows to get their computer working again. For the official Piriform advice on using the Registry Cleaner see this post by Dave CCleaner: https://community.ccleaner.com/topic/59952-i-get-a-registry-error-on-ccleaner-on-windows-10-i-have-scanned-5-times/?tab=comments#comment-326804 Here is Microsofts advice on using any Registry Cleaner: https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/help/2563254/microsoft-support-policy-for-the-use-of-registry-cleaning-utilities Personally I will use it if I have been doing a lot of installing/ununstalling, usually I'll only remove entries that are obviously connected to those installs/uninstalls or to downloads. (Those will ususally be left over Application Paths for things that have been uninstalled, and/or Installer References). TBH even that doesn't need doing, a few (or even a few hundred/thousand) incorrect or leftover/unecessary registry entries only take up a few bytes of space and won't affect the running (or the speed) of your computer at all. To put it in simple words: If you never, ever, use a registry cleaner then you won't even know that there may be incorrect or orphaned registry entries, entries that don't affect your computers running in the slightest way. If you do use a registry cleaner to remove any incorrect/orphaned entries then you take a risk that you could inadvertently remove something that is needed and so break your computer. Once you see it spelled out like that then you see that there is no real need to use a registry cleaner, and especially not regularly, but there is a risk in using one. In the end it's up to each person to decide if they want to take that risk. (Registry Cleaning does have it's uses, it might help as part of if you are trying to fix/clean a computer that has been infected with malware, but that's an advanced job).

Did you get an automated reply from support when you emailed them? I've asked @Dave CCleaner to chase up your email.

The extra 2 months remaining on the existing licence will/should get added to the new one. That process happens automatically, but it isn't instantaneous. The merging robot runs twice a day so it may take a few hours (at very busy times a few days) before you see it has happened. There are 2 reasons why it may not happen automatically though: If you use a different email to purchase/renew than the email used for your existing licence. If there are more than 90 days left on the existing licence. In either of those 2 cases it is assumed that you wanted a new licence for a different computer. In those cases (or if for some other reason the automatic merging doesn't happen in a couple of days) you can still get the remaining time added to the new licence by emailing support@ccleaner.com and asking for a 'Licence Merge'.

I'm not sure that Win 10 does that anymore? Because Defender is always available in Win 10 and will kick-in automatically if there is no other AV registered as active in the Security Centre.

There are often leftover registry entries and files/folders following an uninstall, and especially from uninstalls of Antivirus/Antimalware apps that have self-protection. Usually using the security app's own removal tool rather than just uninstalling gets rid of everything, but even that sometimes leaves things behind. I'd try using Revo Uninstaller which can find and remove such leftovers. As you have already removed Norton and Malwarebytes you will probably need the 'Forced Uninstall' option in Revo. See the link below for how to use it. 'Forced Uninstall' is a Pro option so it needs to be the Revo Pro version - but if you don't want to purchase Revo there is a 30 day trial of Pro which should be plenty of time to do this job. (PS. You can also achieve the same as 'Forced Uninstall' with Revo Free, it just takes more steps - Once you have Revo Free installed then re-install the offending app and use Revo Free to uninstall it again, it's just more faffing about having to do that re-install/uninstall). https://www.revouninstaller.com/how-to/use-forced-uninstall/ https://www.revouninstaller.com/revo-uninstaller-free-download/

As the CCleaner browser is Chromium based then as you say the bookmarks are under the URL bar. So you need an extension/add-on to get the bookmarks at the side like in Firefox. I don't use a Chrome/Chromium browser myself so can't recommend one personally, but this one looks OK and has a good rating. I'm sure there are others similar in the Chrome Web Store if you don't like this particular one. https://www.addictivetips.com/web/how-to-access-chrome-bookmarks-side-panel/

As the old saying goes - 'If you ask 2 people what you need you'll get 3 different opinions'. If your laptop is running OK then it's usually best leaving the drivers alone and not trying to fix what isn't broken.

The online payment problems with debit and credit in India (and Pakistan) are entirely due to government banking regulations in those countries. Software companies who want to sell software in a country have to comply with the government regulations of that country. It's no use complaining to the software company, complain to your government. The Indian government changed their rules again in September, the new changes affect recurring-payments such as subscriptions and automatic renewals. (One time payments should not be affected, but there have been reports that those also may be declined). https://techcrunch.com/2021/09/30/india-recurring-payments-rbi/?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAALmohba1jTnDnCZjbeOKE7QsK7yVg2W-a0TxvXdU0HiMMpK2DJ_3ig1iVhJ-R0IXXHwAmWigiOpA3cPpBlYRRdufKHkR1Usl5R6KZ7WFTdJ6P_S3sPlo3xxOSCMygSk737mZWlPC4Bm7han_D4RRiyr1wzEsGLc5WYNlW_CP2Wo7 So you may find your credit card will now stop working online with other software providers too. Especially any where you have a subscription or automatically renewing licence. You can definitely expect that more online payments will be referred to your bank, and will probably find that your bank will decline some of them. PayPal and other alternatives to Credit/Debit cards are still working, but as that linked article says you may even find that PayPal transactions also start to be declined in India. (It seems to be simply a case that the Indian government want to be able to see everything that their citizens are spending and where they are spending it, especially if it's going abroad. - 'Big Brother' has arrived in India). EDIT- I note that you say you bank with HDFC -

Have you used the 'Contact Us' button on that FAQ page to raise a ticket with support? Alternatively you can email them directly at support@ccleaner.com

Thanks, for confirming that I had understood what you were meaning. As I said above; Windows (and so Speccy) is seeing some change to the drives on your computer. I can easily make my Speccy do the same thing, I close the details for my C drive like so and it will stay closed unless something changes: But then if I simply pull out the Flash Drive, without doing anything else, the details reopen like so: So something is telling your Windows, (and so telling Speccy), that a drive status has been changed on your computer, maybe telling it that that a drive has been turned on or off. Just what is telling Windows that a drive status has been changed, and just which drive has been changed, you will need to investigate further. As it seems to be happening every 2 seconds for you then: It may be some software turning a drive on/off all the time? It may be a fault in a connection? It may be a fault with a Drive? Looking at the Windows Event Viewer may give you a clue as to what is causing it to happen. What other Storage devices apart from that Seagate do you have connected?

If you did then the old version would not be cleaning your machine properly. If you don't want to use Health Check then set Options>Settings CCleaner Home Screen to 'Custom Clean', and simply ignore Health Check. If you don't want to use Driver Updater simply ignore it. Many apps. especially browsers, change quite often and so unless you have the latest CCleaner you won't be clearing them as you should be. For example a few months ago Firefox changed how/where it stores cookies so CCleaner was updated to clean those new locations; last month Chrome/Chromium did the same and changed where/how it stores cookies. Old CCleaner versions won't clean anything at those changed locations. In fact the changes to Chrome/Chromium came too late for the current CCleaner version to include them, so the current CCleaner is not properly cleaning Chrome/Chromium browsers at the moment. They new cleaning needed for Chrome/Chromium will be added in the next CCleaner update, due soon. Windows 10 and 11 also change frequently, (there is a Windows update at least once a month on Patch Tuesday) so CCleaner is constantly changing to keep up with those changes too. The only justification for running an old CCleaner version is if you have Windows Vista or XP, newer CCleaner vesrions will not run on those. There is a 'Sunset' version for those end-of-life Windows versions.

(I assume that by 'data carrier' you mean 'storage media'?) What kind of storage devices are you refering to? (HDD, SDD, USB stick, data card?). What you describe sound like a refresh of the data in Speccy. If Speccy sees a change in the data that it is reporting then that will prompt Speccy to do a refresh of that data. You can see this quite easily for yourself with storage media - if you have Speccy open and plug/unplug a USB stick then Speccy will do a refresh as it reads or removes the USB stick from the displayed information for storage devices. Note that it doesn't have to be something as obvious as a drive being connected/disconnected that is causing your particular refreshing, any change to the data that Speccy reports could cause Speccy to do a refresh. But as it is re-ordering what is being displayed in 'Storage' then that would seem to indicate that Windows is seeing a drive as being connected/disconnected.

A couple of questions the answers to which may help pin down what is happening here. Is it just certain files or when it happens will it not remove any files? If it's just certain ones then: What kind of files are these? (What is being removed and what isn't being removed). What size are the problem files? How long are the pathnames? Is there anything unusual about the formatting of the external drives? (RAID for example). My first thought is due to the fact that these are external drives. And from your description of what is happening it sounds as if it might be similar to something that is sometimes seen when using Recuva with external drives. If it's been long enough between the scan and the attempt to access/delete the file(s) then the external drive may have been powered off/put to sleep by Windows. If/when this happens then when Windows wakes the drive again CCleaner will see the drive as having been changed, so for safety will not apply the results of previously run searches. If that is what is happening here then see this for how to prevent the drive(s) going to sleep: https://www.thewindowsclub.com/prevent-hard-drive-going-sleep-windows If it isn't that (Ie. if some are being removed but others not) then the answers to the questions above may give some other clues.

Yes I did; That goes for all Piriform/CCleaner products. There is no lack of transperency in their Privacy Policy, it's all there readily available to read I gave you a link to the Data Factsheet above, on the right of that page are the links to the detailed policys. I'll give the three I think you are mainly interested in. The General Privacy Policy can be found here: https://www.ccleaner.com/legal/general-privacy-policy The Consent Policy is here: https://www.ccleaner.com/legal/consent-policy The individual Product Policy is here, you'll need to scroll down it to the CCleaner Browser policy: https://www.ccleaner.com/legal/products-policy

The documentation is in the process of a long needed re-write and re-organisation. Some of the old, out of date documentation, has been removed and not been re-written/re-posted yet. The old URL's just redirect to, for now, empty placholders which is what you are seeing. (Yes we know it's frustrating, and we have complained about it) I believe this may have been done on the basis that no information is better than wrong/misleading information. One of the staff may chip in with more information of what is going on with the documentation re-write. I can find the old command line parameters quite easily on various unofficial webpages/blogs. But because they are not official I will not link to any here. I'll leave you to find those yourself, if/when you do then be careful because as said some of the parameters will no longer be valid. Probably certain ones just won't work at all anymore in that form, (hence why the documentation has been taken down for re-writing), but there is always a chance one could do something unexpected.

This does sound like a Driver Updater issue, so I've moved it to the Driver Updater forum for more focused help. This link is where you should start, if it doesn't help then use the 'Contact Us' at the bottom of that FAQ page to raise a ticket and get help by email from support.

Piriform/CCleaner is not interested in your passwords or any other personal data. If they saved anything like that on their servers then they would have to take extra data-protection/data-security measures, it's easier (cheaper) just not to save any of it. The only personal information saved is your registration/licence details if you have purchased a 'Pro' edition. They will occasionally collect other stuff, for error/crash reporting etc. but it's not 'personal' and they don't keep it. You can turn that reporting off if you want to in Options>Privacy. https://www.ccleaner.com/about/data-factsheet Of course for this forum the forum software saves your username/password so that you can log in, and the email you used to register here for if you want email notifications about posts, private messages, etc. As for your browser passwords: If you save your passwords/logins to your browser (any browser) then anyone with access to your computer account has access to those passwords and logins. You could consider a password manager that can encrypt them so they are not so easily read, but anyone logged into your computer using your account will be able to access and use them. If you never let anyone log onto your computer using your account then your browser passwords should be safe enough. Other user accounts will see their own passwords not yours. If you ever want to check if your email or paswords (or even your phone number) have been 'acquired' by bad guys then you can check them here: https://haveibeenpwned.com/ https://haveibeenpwned.com/Passwords

A couple of things could be happening here: Brave is a Chromium based browser - and Chrome browsers changed where and how cookies are stored just before CCleaner v5.88 was released. It happens now and again, browsers sometimes change things without warning, leaving other apps such as cleaners (and antiviruses) to catch up with what they have changed. (It happened with Firefox cookies a couple a months ago to make Firefox more secure, Chrome/Chromium just took a couple of months to 'copy' what Firefox did by storing cookies more securely). This means that CCleaner now needs updating again so that it will clear those new cookie locations for Chromium based browsers, this will happen with the next update, to v5.89, due in a week or two (maybe sooner). See this for a bit more information: However you are mentioning more than cookies so there could be another couple of possibilities. The First is if you have the browser (or extensions/add-ons) set to pre-load or to run in the background after closing. CCleaner cannot clean a browser if part of it is open in the background, so you have to turn those options off. The Second, and more likely from what you describe, is 'syncing'. If you have your browser set to sync then anything that you clean from your machine will be put right back by the syncing. That's how syncing works, it saves your history, session, cookies, etc. in the cloud and sends it back to all your synced devices that don't have it. Take a read of the second part of this "Files that re-appear straight after cleaning" for an explanation of why some things that you have cleaned may come straight back, and what you can do to stop some of it happening:

And what happens if you click 'Download' on the one that you say pops-up everytime you start your PC? Does it download v3.0 so that you can install it? PS. I do notice from your screenshot that you are running Windows 11, that's still new and so can still do some unexpected things. Is it an insider version or the RTM version of Win 11?

You can tick more than one before clicking the delete button. But you have to tick each one manually. That is by deliberate design, partly so that you have to think about what you are doing and don't remove any by mistake. Plus of course only you can know which you want to keep or not, nobody else can decide that for you. (And you would be very annoyed if an app automatically deleted any that you wanted to keep). The Duplicate Finder does the hard work and saves you days, or even weeks/months, finding the duplicates. Think how long it would have taken you to find all the images on your computer, then open and compare each one-by-one to all of the others. What you do with any duplicates once found has to be your choice though. And always remember that what you have set DF to look for is important. ie. Just because 2 files have the same name doesn't mean that they are the same. You need to compare/check the contents as well to be sure.

Take a look at this which should explain why this is happening and how you can put it right: Note that as well as turning off Startup Boost you should also turn off the 'Continue running background apps ......' just underneath it. HOWEVER - You should also note that Chrome browsers (including Microsoft Edge) are currently not being fully cleaned by CCleaner. That is because Chrome based browsers changed where cookies are stored just before CCleaner v5.88 was released, so CCleaner now needs another update to reflect those changes and clean the new cookie locations. That should be fixed shortly

See this for information about how to register and common problems: https://support.piriform.com/hc/en-us/articles/204043844-How-to-register-and-activate-CCleaner-Professional#how-to-register-and-activate-ccleaner-professional-0-0 It may just have been a temporary server error. so try again. If you are still having problems then as the message says the Support team will be able to help. Send them an email at support@ccleaner.com explaining the problem. (Or there is also a 'Contact Us' button at the bottom of the article I linked above). It's best if you use the same email that you used when purchasing. You'll get an automated reply and then someone should get back to you. Normally they are quick and get to you within the hour, it may be a bit slower over the holidays. (EDIT - Last we heard there had been a rush of support requests yesterday and it may take a day to get a reply if they are still busy).

No it is not possible to delete everything on a computer using CCleaner. However if you use the wrong tool in CCleaner, or use it in the wrong way. then it is possible to mess one up. The two CCleaner Tools most likely to do that if used without being entirely sure of what you are doing are Registry Cleaner and Driver Updater. Did you use either or both of those tools? What you describe sound like the computer is booting into a 'Temporary Profile', Windows will sometimes do this if your main profile has a fault. It's a way that Windows has to give you a change to fix the 'broken' profile. Because it's a temporary account and not your account it doesn't have any of your icons, just the standard Windows icons. When you/she restarts the computer does it say anything about being logged into a temporary acount? Being logged in with a temporary profile can (usually) be fixed by someone with a modicum of computer knowledge, and the original profile restored. This gives the 5 simplest fixes to try, if you are not confident about using any particular one then skip it and try the next, or get a family member or friend who is more familiar with computers to help. https://www.guidingtech.com/top-ways-to-fix-logged-in-with-temporary-profile-error-on-windows/ If none of the methods there work then there are more advanced things to try, but you may need a 'techie' friend, or failing that a computer shop, to help. Was your mom's computer backed up? I'm assuming for now that this is Windows 10. If when replying you can confirm that and tell us which Win 10 version it is then that could be helpful. It also usually helps to know what antivirus is being used.

The first thing to say is that the Duplicate Finder is not a system cleaning tool (as such). It can help you save space by suggesting some files that you may not need to have more than one copy of, for instance video files and music files can take up a lot of space on your drive(s), and many people have lots of photos - some of which will be copies. The second thing to say is that normally you should have it set to ignore system files and hidden files. Looking at system files is an advanced option for someone technical looking for possible problems with the system. Many system files need to be duplicated in different locations, and removing any of the duplicates could stop some apps working properly. So it's best to not even to search for duplicate system files, unless you are a technician troubleshooting a problem. As a general user you usually want to be looking for duplicates of your own images, videos, music, & documents. Photo and music duplicates are the things that get searched for most, by far. You need to be careful and think about just what you tell the duplicate finder to look for. Different files can have the same name as each other, and copies of the same file (duplicates) can have different names. But if you search for duplicates using just 'size' and 'content' then you can be sure that they are indeed the same thing. (Although sometimes you may want to find different files with the same name, so that you can then rename one). eg. These are my usual settings when I'm looking for duplicates that may be in different directories (folders) and/or with different names: I will then set the pathname and file type(s) according to where I want to search and what type of file I am looking for, and if I want to search subdirectories as well. Duplicate finder will check the locations I specify for files with the same size and if it finds any then check if the actual contents of the files are identical. That makes sure that they are indeed duplicates, no matter what they are called. (It also ingnores files with the same name that aren't duplicates, because I didn't tell it to look at names). It's quick - much, much quicker than you having to search hundreds (thousands?) of files for yourself. But once it has found the duplicates that match your specified parameters only you can decide which of them you may want to get rid of. Nobody else can do that for you. So, if searching like in my above example, you have to look at the pathnames of the duplicates found and decide which you want to keep - which may be all of them anyway. There is an option to save a list of duplicates found to a text file. Hope that helps.