Scared to use CCleaner

[jm0307]

Hello Forum,

 

I have thus far only cleaned cookies with CClenaer as I was afraid that I could delete something of importance...

 

However, today I let the program analyze all the options with the exception of advanced settings: 198MB. Now that would be worth recovering.

 

Having read the Beginner's Guide I am aware that the Advanced section is best left alone, and that all other sections are considered safe. Yet, as a computer challenged individual, I wanted to make sure and ask here whether there are any other settings which could potentially cause trouble and are best avoided to stay on the safe side? (e.g. index.dat files, temporary files, cleaning MS Office...) Or should I just tick all the boxes aside from Advanced options?

 

Thanks, and best wishes

[Andavari]

If you like how you have Microsoft Office Word configured you should untick the cleaning of MS Office because it will completely wipe out how you have Word configured. That's about it though.

 

Edit: Welcome to the forums!

[login123]

Hi, jm0307. Welcome.

[jm0307]

Greetings Andavari and login123,

 

Thanks for the welcome.

 

I take it everything with the exception of MS Office is just clutter?

 

If so, great!!!

 

Best wishes

[Andavari]

For the most part the rest is pretty much clutter. It's just an individual decision if you want other programs clutter cleaned or not. If you're not sure what is going to be removed from a program you should open the .ini files located in the CCleaner program folder to see what will be removed. Note: CCleaner.ini is just the CCleaner settings file so it won't reveal what's cleaned.

 

You should also configure CCleaner to save the cookies you wish to keep for your browsers, i.e.; to retain login information, etc., other than that you should be good to go.

[Caldor]

It all depends on what you think is "clutter" against useful stuff. Like, you might like the autocomplete data in your browser. Or you might prefer that google earth's cache is not deleted. My advice is dont delete anything your not sure about and do research on things to find out more.

 

CCleaner is not in a robust state as the defintions for how to detect and remove "clutter" are old. Some things dont get detected and other times things are not deleted fully. The community has not done a good job of helping the devs keep this stuff up to date - its more or less a continual task as new software and new versions of existing software came out - plus the issues with new operating systems like Vista. It's worse on Vista too due to changes and additions to where "clutter" can be stored.

 

There is also somethings Im not sure CCleaner can do that are privacy problems like not being able to remove directories as well as files that leaves trails of where the user has been with adobe's flash player. I asked about it here but did not get any reply.