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CCleaner is erasing 'good folder' contents


coinshooter

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Hello,

 

Recently I had to do a reinstall of Vista. I ended up with a duplicate My Documents, My Downloads etc. folders. The Dupes were in the Windows Old subfolder. Anyway, when I deleted the Dupes all seemed well. But when I later ran CCleaner with the Secure deletion setting it began to delete all the song in the "My Music" folder? It has continued to try to do this through the last three updates.

 

At first I thought it was just deleting some left overs from the My Music folder in the Windows Old folder, but that was not the case. By the time I canceled it to check things, most my songs were deleted?! In Norman cleaning mode it doesn't do that, but in any Secure setting it begins to delete everything in My Music folder. I checked all the "included" items and that folder is not there.

 

Suggestions would be helpful.

 

coinshooter

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Windows 7 Ultimate, and also presumable Vista, has BLACK HOLES where data disappears over the Event Horizon.

 

Just as in Sci-Fi, behind every blackhole is a wormhole leading to another universe/dimension etc.,

so Windows 7 etc has blackholes which are called Junctions or Reparse Points that lead to somewhere else.

 

Some of these reparse points are bidirectional - what you deposit you can retrieve.

Others are write (exit) only, and you have to look somewhere else to find them.

 

Write only holes allow you to write, but prevent you from reading or even deleting.

If you can write then you can OVER-WRITE which destroys what was there,

so SECURE deletion will overwrite and destroy what a simple delete cannot harm.

 

I ran under XP Junction Link Magic from www.rekenwonder.com/linkmagic.htm

It shows under drive M:\ (XP name for dual-boot W7)

m:\Users\Alan\My Documents\ C:\Users\Alan\Documents

I have 44 such junctions in W7, and they seem to appear when you use an XP path such as "My Documents"

I do not trust black holes.

 

I suspect you have 88 blackholes, 44 of them in your "Windows Old" subfolder.

I also suspect that regardless of the natural consequences of the original 44 blackholes,

when you try to delete part of the legacy of the "Old", the junctions within may still point at the music etc. where it PREVIOUSLY existed, and not to the recent "OLD" subfolder.

 

If you run CMD.EXE and paste this sequence will show if you have a blackhole problem

echo %TIME% > "%USERPROFILE%\Application Data"\ALAN_LOST
DEL "%USERPROFILE%\Application Data"\ALAN_LOST
echo %TIME% > "%APPDATA%"\ALAN_KEPT
echo %TIME% >> "%USERPROFILE%\Application Data"\ALAN_LOST
TYPE "%USERPROFILE%\Application Data"\ALAN_LOST
TYPE "%APPDATA%"\ALAN_KEPT
TYPE "%APPDATA%"\ALAN_LOST
DEL "%APPDATA%"\ALAN_KEPT
DEL "%APPDATA%"\ALAN_LOST


N.B. "DEL "%APPDATA%"\ALAN_LOST" should be followed by a blank line,

or you have to hit the ENTER

 

This creates a ALAN_LOST but is unable to find it or delete it

Then it creates ALAN_KEPT and appends a time stamp to ALAN_LOST

It is unable to type ALAN_LOST via the blackhole route

but it can type ALAN_LOST when I use the %APPDATA% route.

The time stamps tell it all.

The last two commands clean up the test files.

It is not my ego which names my tests ALAN_KEEP etc.

but experience that scripts go wrong whilst I am debugging,

and I can rapidly search my whole system and instantly find everything that "got away from me".

 

I have attached what I see with Windows 7

 

Regards

Alan

post-19700-128351667166_thumb.gif

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  • Moderators

Coinshooter, you asked this question a month ago with no resolution. I can only suggest using some brute force methods. Try renaming and/or moving your music folders to see if that keeps them safe. Or just back them up somewhere and let secure delete take its course. If something like that was happening to me then securing the data would be the first thing I'd do.

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  • 1 month later...

Hello,

 

Recently I had to do a reinstall of Vista. I ended up with a duplicate My Documents, My Downloads etc. folders. The Dupes were in the Windows Old subfolder. Anyway, when I deleted the Dupes all seemed well. But when I later ran CCleaner with the Secure deletion setting it began to delete all the song in the "My Music" folder? It has continued to try to do this through the last three updates.

 

At first I thought it was just deleting some left overs from the My Music folder in the Windows Old folder, but that was not the case. By the time I canceled it to check things, most my songs were deleted?! In Norman cleaning mode it doesn't do that, but in any Secure setting it begins to delete everything in My Music folder. I checked all the "included" items and that folder is not there.

 

Suggestions would be helpful.

 

coinshooter

 

Windows Vista also fubars the start menu if you go trying to rearrange, or delete, or move certain "system" folders off the start menu. Why would you do this? To umm, customize the menu perhaps? Had no problems with this in XP, but Vista & 7 are a different animal. The moment you do this, forever afterwards, Vista & 7 try to recreate the "old start menu" path that you created when you moved items off the start menu.

 

The trouble is, that Vista adds these items back to the start menu, & then gets confused by you having moved them earlier, so it counts the start menu items as having 2 locations instead of one. It is confusing having Vista try to maintain 2 copies of the accessories folder etc, when this problem never existed in XP! In addition, it causes future installations to try to install to the "new" location instead of to the start menu where it belongs!

 

I tell you what might be simplest... Determine how much music & files you have. Select them all, right click, properties...

Now, right click My Computer & click manage.

 

Now bring up the disk management & under drive C: or whatever drive you have Vista on, right click it & choose shrink.

Leave more than enough space for your files, then create a new partition & quick format it.

 

Open My Computer to see the "new drive" & then open the drive & right click/new folder on that drive.

Create a My Music, My Documents, My Pictures folder & add your content there.

 

This way, it is protected from viruses, malware, ccleaner deletion etc, assuming they are normal viruses that just attack drive C:

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Alan:

 

What you are describing sounds like files/folders that exist but are simply marked inaccessible.

These are not black holes, you just cannot natively browse through the contents under the regular windows browse mode.

 

I have personally run across files such as these when using certain data recovery programs that can read & parse the normally access denied folders.

Typically, windows will give such errors for areas such as these:

 

- Password protected user accounts

- System Volume Information

- Various system only areas

 

I noted that in your picture, one of the directories was marked inaccessible, which is exactly as a file would appear if it were protected from normal browsing state. This does not mean that the data does not exist or that Windows cannot access the data. It simply means that it marks it as such to prevent users like you from accessing those data for either privacy or data corruption concerns.

 

Additionally, Windows Vista & 7 both suffer from serious problems with system preservation errors. For example, you can in Windows XP easily modify the contents of the start menu. Try to move the Accessories from All Programs on the Start Menu in Vista or 7 to another location such as the desktop. Vista & 7 will auto generate a new copy on the start menu, but the problem doesn't end there. Delete that folder off the desktop, & despite it being "gone", windows will still try to install programs to the "new" start menu location on the desktop. This would be the desktop or where-ever you happened to move that system item from the start menu earlier. So a new "Start Menu" item will be created on the desktop (or where-ever you happened to have moved it).

 

I highly suspect that this is a problem in Vista/7 & not CCleaner itself. In such a situation, the only plausible way to correct this would be to correct the errors, whether this involves a system restore or total system reinstall in order for CCleaner to be able to resume normal cleaning duty. CCleaner, I suspect, is not targeting the incorrect places for deletion, but rather Windows causes the target(s) to be wrongfully used or applied due problems such as listed above. I don't even know if a System Restore can fix the problem I listed above, so it is highly advised not to try it unless you simply have a setup you are not afraid to damage for testing purposes. Additionally, I found a bug with Vista System Restore (so it probably applies to Windows 7 as well) wherein that you can restore the system back a few days, then you can undo that restore. Try to restore to a restore point even older than the one you used initially & it will work, but all your restore points will get erased.

 

Regards,

Don

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  • Moderators

Do you guys know what "bullet points" are?

 

Of course you do. Please think about adopting them, before I do something silly like cut my wrists.

 

Have some sympathy for us mods, as we have to read through all the posts on here.

:)

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