I am paranoid about doing anything with the Registry. Norton Symantec came installed on my computer when new and I used their uninstaller to get rid of it. I now find 51 issues in CCleaner involving Norton or Symantec.
Can I safely clean out all of them or should they be fixed. The program was only on my computer for about 6 months (until I installed AVAST). I've only had CCleaner for a couple of months and am on a learning curve.
Hi puzzleaddict, and welcome to Piriform.
As long as you follow the CCleaner dialogue to back up the entries you are removing, and take note of the location you save it to (default is "My Documents") you should be fine to remove them.
I had Norton pre installed on my PC as well, and although you used the Norton tool to remove it, you will get things popping up afterwards.
I'm guessing you don't have any other Norton product installed as you would probably have mentioned it.
Hope that helps, but post back if you have any more concerns or queries.
Hi puzzleaddict, and welcome to Piriform.
As long as you follow the CCleaner dialogue to back up the entries you are removing, and take note of the location you save it to (default is "My Documents") you should be fine to remove them.
I had Norton pre installed on my PC as well, and although you used the Norton tool to remove it, you will get things popping up afterwards.
I'm guessing you don't have any other Norton product installed as you would probably have mentioned it.
Hope that helps, but post back if you have any more concerns or queries.
Thank you Dennis.
No I have no other Norton product, I don't think. Some of the entries of Symantec and some Norton-- could anything be a shared program. I don't understand about following the CCleaner dialogue to back up the entries I'm removing-- sound like I'm just moving from one place to another and they will still be on my computer which I'm trying to clean up. As you may guess, I'm not very bright about these things. The only option where I found these items is to fix them. If I don't use them why should I fix them.
To fix norton would be to remove the company and all its software from the computing world
or in your case to delete the entries
Thank you Dennis.No I have no other Norton product, I don't think. Some of the entries of Symantec and some Norton-- could anything be a shared program. I don't understand about following the CCleaner dialogue to back up the entries I'm removing-- sound like I'm just moving from one place to another and they will still be on my computer which I'm trying to clean up. As you may guess, I'm not very bright about these things. The only option where I found these items is to fix them. If I don't use them why should I fix them.
Just delete them.
The term "fix" actually means delete. I don't know of any registry cleaner that actually carries out any kind of repair on a registry entry, as they are removing dead links. Pointers to programs or files which are no longer there.
The CCleaner dialogue is simply the pop up window asking if you want to make a back up of the entries you are removing.
The backup is a very small .reg file stored in a place of your choice, the default location is My Documents.
It doesn't contain anything which can harm your computer at all, and it's sole purpose is to restore the entries removed if there was a problem afterwards.
In this case, the Norton/Symantec entries are to be expected after having Norton on your computer, and I'm sure you won't have any problems after deleting them.
Your caution is very wise as some registry cleaners go a lot deeper into the registry than CCleaner, and can cause serious issues. CCleaner is well know as a "safe" registry cleaner, and problems after using it are not very common related to the number of folk who have it installed.
Of course you don't have to use the Registry Cleaner feature at all. If you're not comfortable, then you can simply leave it alone and concentrate on keeping your computer free of temp files and cookies.
Either way, the members here are always available to help out with any queries or issues you may have.
Hope that helps.
Thank you very much. I have learned something and feel much more comfortable doing this.
puzzleaddict