I Can't Get Rid of the Cookie List

[owl222]

Hi,

 

This is totally driving me nuts.....

 

No matter what I do I dont seem to be able to get rid of the list of cookies to either keep or delete.

 

At first I thought that those cookies were not deleting properly, since every time I run CCleaner, it says "cookie deleted" on a large list of cookies, for firefox. Then, if I run CCleaner again, it still says cookies deleted and names them all. I thought they must not be deleting in firefox so I spent hours trying to figure how how to find them... with no luck. I even thought they must be flash cookies and did a whole lot of stuff to find and clear flash cookies.... it wasnt that.

 

Finally I have thought that the list of cookies does not exist anywhere other than in CCleaner itself. When I go into the cookie menu, where you can either delete or keep them, they are all there, the exact ones I was having the problem with.

 

But I can't figure out how to remove them from this list. There seems to be no way. Even renaming them just creates two cookies, one with the new name and then the old cookie domain name is regenerated as another cookie and pops up its ugly head in the other list, so now there are two cookies where there was once one. It seems possible to delete the new one (with a name like j that i made up) but not any of the original ones.

 

I tried saving settings to an ini file, and edited the ini file as administrator. The list was there! So I deleted them all in the .ini.

 

Then when I ran CCleaner, they were all back again!!!!!!!!

 

Where on earth is this list being stored and how can I remove it???????

[owl222]

PS I looked in the registry too for CCleaner and they werent in there , at least not in HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Piriform\CCleaner

[kroozer]

a recent thread

[owl222]

thanks kroozer

 

ive got opera but its an older version i dont use much, and it doesnt support persistent storage (its v9 and the earliest with ps is v10). just in case i deleted both opera folders in appdata local and roaming. (and before i deleted them i said there were no cookies but i deleted them anyway) i also tried everything else in that post including the IE clearing and the flash one (which i had tried already but i looked again)....

 

so they are still there

 

CCleaner seems to think the cookies belong to firefox (which is what i use most of the time) but i dont know if they really do. ive tried renaming my firefox profiles in both local and roaming and it didnt help, even though firefox wouldnt start (until i changed the names back), CCleaner still found the list of cookies as before

[Andavari]

ive tried renaming my firefox profiles in both local and roaming and it didnt help, even though firefox wouldnt start (until i changed the names back), CCleaner still found the list of cookies as before

 

I wonder if those persistent cookies could be caused by ticking a box on a forum/site that has an 'always remember me' option, perhaps those cookies are stored in such a way cleaning tools like CCleaner can't deal with them.

[DennisD]

Can you show us (maybe a screen shot) which cookies they are, then I could access the sites and see what transpires.

 

If you want to retain your privacy, which is perfectly understandable, then I'd be happy for you to pm the info to me.

 

I even thought they must be flash cookies and did a whole lot of stuff to find and clear flash cookies.... it wasnt that.

 

You don't actually say so, but you do have "Abobe Flash Player" checked in "Applications\Multimedia don't you.

 

Obvious I know, but I had to ask.

[owl222]

I made a screenshot image of about half of the list but I can't see a way to upload it without posting it as a URL on a website. but here are some from the list

 

google.com.au

addons.mozilla.org

aolanswers.com

affiilate-program.amazon.co.uk

 

these were the first 4 of the finally displayed list in CCleaner, then i left the next few out for privacy. a few others were

 

www.ask.com

www.cyclingforums.com

www.reviewcentre.com

 

there are about 80 cookies on the full list.

 

i noticed that when i click on the cookie control page in CCleaner, it takes about 0.5 to 1 seconds to generate the list of cookies, and it generates it in a different order to how it displays it (i.e. the first items to be displayed are later moved further down the list).. i thought this may be a clue. it was too fast for me to see the first few that came up (since it the first few are moved down in less than half a second) , but i managed to take a screenshot when there were only a few on the list, so i could see the first ones that it found

 

these are

 

mozillg.org

237572123.log.optimizely.com

developer.mozilla.org

google.com.au

support.mozilla.org

webdevwonders.com

www.google.com.au

 

all the mozilla ones also suggest its FF thats doing it .

 

yes i have the flash player ticked in CCleaner. all the app ticks are ticked except for a few in thunderbird (eg the passwords). i also installed an add on clean flash cookies from firefox (and it said there were none) , and i went to the web page on macromedia that controls flash player cookies (and it said there were none).

 

 

I wonder if those persistent cookies could be caused by ticking a box on a forum/site that has an 'always remember me' option, perhaps those cookies are stored in such a way cleaning tools like CCleaner can't deal with them.

 

 

after reading that other post with opera and persistent storage, i thought maybe it was that but in firefox.... in FF they call this DOM storage ( i think its the same thing).... so i installed an app to clean that from firefox.....

 

then i also went into the FF setting list (you have to do this manually in about:config), and turned off DOM objects completely

 

but after all that .the list is still there in CCleaner...

[owl222]

PS. a lot of the sites in the cookie list are very common ones...... so you would think everyone would have this problem if it was the sites that were responsible

 

i just had an idea............. i do web dev so i have a lot of browsers installed...... maybe there is an older version of another browser that ive forgotten about , somewhere in c:\program files??? ill have a look for that....

 

Also, the big unremoveable list of cookies seems to reflect a "snapshot" of what i was looking at at some time in the past, perhaps all on the same day, or at least all within a short space of time

[owl222]

PPS

 

OOOOOOOHHH a big big clue

 

in a previous post, i said i renamed the FF profile thinking that would stop CCleaner from looking in it. it did stop FF from starting so i thought that would be enough.

 

BUT then i just thought, it was still left in the same directory, so maybe CCleaner still looked in it

 

so just then i moved it to the desktop (both the local and the roaming ones)..... and now there are only three cookies on the list

 

and thost 3 are probably from what im browsing in right now in IE, they are just two from google and one from piriform

 

i still want to track this down but the problem cookies are DEFINITELY somewhere in the profile of FF (and the main profile that i use all the time)

[owl222]

i have a few ideas now. i dont have time atm but later ill try them

 

most of the list is from about 2 years ago (and ones i know ive browsed more recently are generic like google), im guessing that maybe an older version of FF uses different files , and its left a file in the profile folder , with the cookies in it, and they are sitting there ignored by everything except CCleaner

 

if i do a global string search inside every file in the profile folder, that should find them (as long as they are in plain text but most of the FF stuff is i think , or at least .sqlite which is mosly plain text)

[owl222]

interesting though that CCleaner can find them , and claim to be cleaning them, but not be..... i guess that still does count as a bug?

 

other than this issue CCleaner has been an awesome program, btw

[owl222]

The cookies were in the firefox (roaming) profile, in the file webappstore.sqlite

 

A text search of this file did not find them, even when I knew they were in the file (by moving bunches of files in and out of the profile folder, i was able to narrow it down to that file). Opening the file in wordpad shows some plain text and some binary stuff. The cookies must be encoded in binary somehow since the domain names were not found in plain text in the file, even with the search in wordpad (or with the DOS shell command findstr)

 

I moved the file out of the profile and firefox seems to run fine without it. I was half expecting my plugins to lose their config information, but this does not seem to have happened (as least not the ones ive looked at)

 

I think this means that they are DOM storage not true cookies

 

Last night I installed a plugin that allows clearing of DOM storage, when the file was in the profile folder (i.e. active) , runnning this plugin did not clear the mystery "cookies"

 

They are gone now though along with the rest of whatever was in that file.....

 

Problem solved (unless anything important was in that file but i think it will be fine)

[Andavari]

The cookies were in the firefox (roaming) profile, in the file webappstore.sqlite

 

I've personally deleted that file since its inception. Deleting it won't harm Firefox.

[DennisD]

Well done with that detective work, and we appreciate the detailed updates which are extremely helpful to others who may encounter this problem.

 

And us of course.

[Alan_B]

so just then i moved it to the desktop (both the local and the roaming ones)

This is NOT by itself able to do what you think.

I think it only works as expected if you stop the Windows Service "DISTRIBUTED LINK TRACKING CLIENT"

 

I have been testing a new version of an application.

Two days ago I received the latest Beta variant and tried to install to a new location,

but it detected the previous version in the old location and would not proceed unless I allowed it to uninstall the previous.

 

Instead I renamed the parent folder from

D:\Rescue\ to D:\#-Rescue-3.4-Beta-#\

and exactly as you would have expected,

the previous version was no longer detected and I was able to install to E:\Rescue-3.4.1\

 

BUT As I anticipated,

 

Windows Start Menu now has fully working links to the older variant in its new location as well as a new link to the latest variant on a different drive.

and a desktop shortcut that launched the old variant on the old path still launches that application on a new path

 

I put this down to the magic of the Windows Services

DISTRIBUTED LINK TRACKING CLIENT

which has the description

"Maintains links between NTFS files within a computer or across computers in a network."

This service is normally by default an Automatic Startup Type.

I found that it had to be either disabled or set to manual and stopped before I could use Acronis Partition image software.

[hazelnut]

So Alan, to cut your long story short, are you really saying that Owl222's cookie problems would have been sorted if he had disabled the Windows Distributed Link Tracking Service?

[Alan_B]

So Alan, to cut your long story short, are you really saying that Owl222's cookie problems would have been sorted if he had disabled the Windows Distributed Link Tracking Service?

Yes, that is a definite possibility (nothing is certain with Windows).

 

The other less technical solution might have been to delete that folder and its contents.

Even a temporary delete to the recycle bin might have been enough - rashly assuming that Windows has the intelligence to recognise that recycled things do not need tracking.

 

I do not really understand all the consequence of Windows Distributed Link Tracking Service

I just know that when it is active you do not lose track of where things move to.

 

I understand that due to this service a company I.T. Administrator is able to relocate an application suite from one of his network servers to another server,

and automatically all his user client computers will use that application without an user awareness that relocation has happened.

[hazelnut]

Alan I don't really think owl222 wanted chapter and verse on the innards of Windows, he just wanted his cookes cleaned.

[Alan_B]

Agreed, owl222 wanted his cookies cleaned,

 

BUT DennisD said

"...we appreciate the detailed updates which are extremely helpful to others who may encounter this problem..."

and I consider truth to be more helpful than mistaken information.

 

Had I ignored the mistake then others who read this topic could have falsely assumed that moving a folder or a file would render it inoperative.

[Nergal]

Agreed, owl222 wanted his cookies cleaned,

 

BUT DennisD said

"...we appreciate the detailed updates which are extremely helpful to others who may encounter this problem..."

and I consider truth to be more helpful than mistaken information.

 

Had I ignored the mistake then others who read this topic could have falsely assumed that moving a folder or a file would render it inoperative.

but instead left everyone more confused

[Alan_B]

but instead left everyone more confused

Accepted,

but the source of the confusion is the default behaviour of Windows which misleads the normal P.C. owner.