What does Wipe Free Space do? What does the User Assist History do? And does Desktop Shortcuts really delete all of your shortcuts?
What do they do in CCleaner?
Wipe Free Space...wipes the free space. Everything marked as free on your hard drive will be overwritten with zeroes.
It doesn't free up space, and doesn't improve performance at all. And it should never be run on a SSD (solid-state disk).
The main point is to make sure your data will never be recoverable. If, say, you wanted to sell a drive, and that drive had sensitive information on it, deleting everything and then running WFS can be a good idea.
However, it should not be run as a normal cleaning.
Desktop Shortcut deletes the shortcuts that do not point to a valid file (e.g. after uninstalling a program, if the uninstaller was badly coded, a shortcut might remain on the desktop).
No idea as to what User Assist History cleans, however. Sorry:(
Wipe Free Space...wipes the free space. Everything marked as free on your hard drive will be overwritten with zeroes.
It doesn't free up space, and doesn't improve performance at all. And it should never be run on a SSD (solid-state disk).
The main point is to make sure your data will never be recoverable. If, say, you wanted to sell a drive, and that drive had sensitive information on it, deleting everything and then running WFS can be a good idea.
However, it should not be run as a normal cleaning.
Desktop Shortcut deletes the shortcuts that do not point to a valid file (e.g. after uninstalling a program, if the uninstaller was badly coded, a shortcut might remain on the desktop).
No idea as to what User Assist History cleans, however. Sorry:(
Thanks, and i found out that User Assist History cleans all the Used Programs and Apps from the Start Menu.
See here for more info on what cleans what
http://docs.piriform.com/ccleaner/ccleaner-rules/windows-tab/advanced-windows-files
Also look under the system files link on the left.
why dont applications comer with help files and documentatations????
I hope I am hitting the right buttons here to post a reply!! Anyway, I have read repeatedly that it is best not to check "wipe free space". I just updated CCleaner and I don't know what defaults were checked before the update but currently the "wipe free space" is checked by default in both C drive and "wipe MFT". These are in Options, Settings. Do I need to uncheck these?
joycej
Hi joycej.
Yes you've hit the right buttons, and it would be a good idea to uncheck those two items.
They won't actually run without the "Wipe Free Space" box being checked in "CCleaner\Windows\Advanced", but best to play safe.
Thanks Dennis! I really appreciate your input.
joycej