FEAR OF DESTROYING NECESSARY DATA AND FILES

[MILES]

Hi,

I have a Win Xp Home,Pentium 4 , 2.4 ghz cpu, 512 mb ram, and two 80 gb Hard Drives Computer in a 3 computer wired network with a dsl modem and Linksys router. I use and daily update the following programs to insure all is well, clean and the computer runs well, like new: Adware Se, Spybot S & D, System Mechanic, P C Medic, AvG Anti Viral, Cleancache, and Bug Doctor. The computer is 3 years old and a generic brand. My question and concern are as follows: After running all these programs and deleting all unecessary registry entries, pointless files and shortcuts, emptying the caches, etc. Your program after scanning and analyzing found over 3 gb of useless files and registry entries, obviously missed by all my thorough cleaning daily with updated definitions and current components for these programs!!! Over 3,00 files were scanned and ready for deletion with your highly reputable program. I'm wondering why my programs missed all this and will removing all these "bad files and junk" found by your program in any way crash my hard drive, or jeopordize my system? Also, besides backing up the registry, after your program cleans it, allowing me to restore it if something was removed that was needed, does it also make a backup for all the other files deleted fom the general cleanup, should they be necessary to restore? I really want to use your free and excellent, well rated program, however, as you might imagine from my paranoia, I am concerned regarding the questions you may be able to answer d explain and clarify to my novice status.

Thank you very much for reading this lengthy novel and I really will appreciate any help, answers, and support you may communicate to me.

 

Sincerely.

 

Miles E. Stone, M. D.

[Eldmannen]

For the love of god use line-breaks.

When you click on the "Analyze" button, it lists all files that it will remove, so look through that.

Maybe it removes the %TEMP% folders. Besure not to store important stuff, I heard of few dumb people which did just that.

[oli]

when i first ran this program this program it found 2 or 3 gig. it just removes crap off ur computer which you dont need. if your really paranoid u can make a restore point, i suppose that would work

[krit86lr]

Necessary data and files should be backed up. System Restore won't save/backup personal documents. And yeah, don't store personal docs in temp folders. And check your environment variables.

[Humpty]

I would be a bit wary at that amount of junk as System Mechanic is no slouch at cleaning a system.

 

With System Mechanic did you run both cleanup modes.Haven't used it for a while but I think -find system junk and cleanup user tracking.

 

Actually,come to think of it,doesn't System Mechanic make backups of deleted items as "bak" files and CCleaner is flagging these as junk.

 

Just a thought.

[lokoike]

One other obvious thing to check would be to see if the Empty Recycle Bin checkbox was checked or not. Lots of people delete stuff, but then they never empty their Recycle Bin, which means the stuff is still there.

 

So, you most likely had tons of junk in your Recycle Bin, and CCleaner just freed up that space for you.

 

Also, CCleaner has the option to clean out your Hotfix Uninstallers as well, which can free up hundreds of megabytes of space, so perhaps look and see if that box is checked too.

 

Let us know what you find out, and welcome to the forum!

[pwillener]

One more point: if you have many login names and passwords stored in cookies, be sure to configure the cookies to keep (Options, Cookies) before permanently deleting all cookies.

 

Also, whether or not you run Ccleaner (Issues), it is useful to back up your complete registry from time to time. ERUNT is a very good (free) tool for that.

[MILES]

I would be a bit wary at that amount of junk as System Mechanic is no slouch at cleaning a system.

 

With System Mechanic did you run both cleanup modes.Haven't used it for a while but I think -find system junk and cleanup user tracking.

 

Actually,come to think of it,doesn't System Mechanic make backups of deleted items as "bak" files and CCleaner is flagging these as junk.

 

Just a thought.

 

Thanks, HUMPTY

I think all my scanners that remove files make backups in case a file that is needed gets removed. Maybe all these files from the many scanners I use are what CCleaner is trying to delete in its analysis!!

I bet you are right.

 

Miles

 

One other obvious thing to check would be to see if the Empty Recycle Bin checkbox was checked or not. Lots of people delete stuff, but then they never empty their Recycle Bin, which means the stuff is still there.

 

So, you most likely had tons of junk in your Recycle Bin, and CCleaner just freed up that space for you.

 

Also, CCleaner has the option to clean out your Hotfix Uninstallers as well, which can free up hundreds of megabytes of space, so perhaps look and see if that box is checked too.

 

Let us know what you find out, and welcome to the forum!

 

Thank you, lokoike

I appreciate your welcome and advice. All you guys in the thread have been so helpful.

 

Miles