CCleaner & Google Drive

Let me start by describing my setup:

Windows 7, X64, SP1

Asus M4A785-M motherboard

SanDisk SSD

CCleaner 4.10

Google Drive (IDK what version it is, download date 03/27/14)

For the past six months I have been pulling my hair out trying to figure out the reason why my computer would randomly freeze about 20 or 30 seconds after booting up. I spent about a week flipping services on and off trying to figure out why I was constantly getting "Event ID 7001" errors:

  • The HomeGroup Provider service depends on the Function Discovery Provider Host service which failed to start because of the following error:

    The dependency service or group failed to start.

  • The Workstation service depends on the Network Store Interface Service service which failed to start because of the following error:

    The dependency service or group failed to start.

I finally stumbled upon something that I think "solved/worked-around" the problem. When booting, before freezing I accidentally popped open CCleaner (I have it run when Windows starts) and noticed that it had gotten stuck on one particular file:

  • C:\Users\%username%\AppData\Local\Temp\_MEI55362\pythoncom27.dll

After repeating this exact same rigamoroux 3 or 4 times I decided I found my culprit. I found that the file has to do with Google Drive (GD). I rebooted to safe mode and ran CCleaner and it ran with no problems, rebooted into normal mode and had no problems since the file had been deleted (see screen shot).

  • post-69138-0-34179300-1395938062_thumb.jpg The screen shot is of CCleaner when I ran it in safe mode. CCleaner searched and it found / deleted the pythoncom27.dll file.

I uninstalled GD and had no booting problems for a couple of days. I reinstalled GD and >boom!< the computer froze. Another thing I found was that whenever the computer froze, _MEI***** would change the last five digits of the folder's name.

I don't know why this is happening, I just know that it is happening. So, I guess that a possible solution could be adding an option for CCleaner to "delay start by 30 seconds," maybe (IDK) this will help CCleaner and GD to play nice with each other :D:) .

Muchas gracias,

Ray

Update April 15th

I found a better way to workaround the problem. I downloaded and installed Glary Utilities 4.9, where I used the 'Startup Manager' to delay CCleaner's startup by 15 seconds. The neat thing is that Glary utilities allows you to pick and chose which applications will run at boot and which ones you can delay by whatever amount of time you want.

Ray, thank you for the information you have provided and the level of detail. We will take a look into this. :)

I have been having a similar problem to Bonehead, and also to several other posts where CCleaner has frozen (Siegried M. and akidna). These may be part of the same underlying problem.

I am running the free version of CCleaner (currently 4.12) on a Dell Inspiron 1764 laptop with Windows 7 Professional SP1 (64bit).

For some time I have had an occasional problem, affecting several successive versions of CCleaner, where, on running CCleaner:

1) It hangs around the 18-26% mark, the circular activity icon continues to rotate but nothing further happens.

2) Other Windows programs, and Windows itself, hang or fail to start - this may be progressive. I can close CCleaner on the Desktop and start Task Manager from a Tray icon, but usually other programs will not start whether from Desktop icons, Taskbar icons or jumplists, or the Start Menu. Programs already running, such as Excel, will freeze.

3) After closing its window, CCleaner remains running according to Task Manager (which usually doesn't freeze), but cannot be killed from within Task Manager.

4) Windows will not shut down or reboot, whether from the Start Menu or using a utility, necessitating a hard reboot. I usually reboot into Safe Mode and run CCleaner there and never have a repeat of the problem. There is no problem rebooting normally afterwards, or with then running CCleaner again.

5) When CCleaner hangs it is always displaying the same type of file name (presumably as the current file being deleted) which is a DLL in a subdirectory of C:\Users\[user name]\AppData\Local\Temp. The names of the actual files vary (though WMI-something is most common), as does the subdirectory involved, but they are ALWAYS DLLs.

6) I am posting in this conversation because yesterday I installed the Google Drive software to test it out. Afterwards, CCleaner hung again, this time on a file 'pythoncom27.dll' in a subdirectory in Appdata\Local\Temp created by Google Drive.

At the very least, there seems to be a problem with CCleaner being able to skip over files that are in use in this Temp directory, though it is presumably skipping over in-use files elsewhere all the time. Unlike Bonehead, I do not have CCleaner set to start when Windows starts. I only run it manually after Windows has been running for some time.

I have just set up an exclusion in CCleaner for Appdata\Local\Temp\*\*.DLL though I am not sure it will work with constantly changing subdirectory names. I'll only know when I have not had CCleaner hang for a few weeks. And I may just end up accumulating unwanted temporary DLLs.

David