As most of us, I am using CCleaner to keep my Windows (XP Pro SP2) installation fresh and prevent the dreaded slowing down and even problems/crashing as the installation gets more and more gunked up with c..p ...
One cause of problems is the accumulation of expired or unused devices. Go to Start -> Settings -> Control Panel -> System -> Hardware -> Device Manager -> View -> Show hidden devices to see them. You may need to go to Start -> Settings -> Control Panel -> System -> Advanced -> Environment Variables and add a variable "devmgr_show_nonpresent_devices" set to "1" first.
Clicking on your hardware list, you will then see many grayed out devices that are not used, remain from old installs, etc. Particularly bad are USB sticks, which I have seen to leave dozens of obsolete device drivers... I have found that these device drivers are responsible for many peripherals, eg USB sticks, printers, ext drives, wireless interfaces, etc not installing or working correctly...
It would be FANTASTIC, if CCleaner could clean these out - this would let my PCs run much more reliably... It would be necessary to have a "do not delete" list (like with the cookies) as some device drivers need to be kept.
Piriform, can you add this?
Many thanks :-)
Em