Custom Clean Problems

[KenK3664]

I use CCleaner for Win10, v. 5.87.9306 (64 bit) with Windows 10 v. 10.0.19043 (64 bit).  My default browser is Chrome.  When I attempt to analyze for a custom clean I am told that IE Temporary Internet Files has 5121k in one file.  Running CCleaner never elimates it.  The same report shows up under "Windows" and "Applications" in custom clean.  I have tried to wipe temporary files directly in IE but they are still there in CCleaner.  When I click on the IE Temp Files description in CCleaner I get the following description:  "C:\Users\Ken\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\INetCache\Low\Suggestedsites.dat"  (BTW my Windows user name is "Ken")  I search for this file, showing hidden files also, but cannot find it.  I run the same version of CCleaner on my SurfacePro7 running the same version of Windows 10 but do not get this custom clean message.  When I run custom clean on my SurfacePro it comes back "0" after running CCleaner.  Any ideas why I get two different reports and how I can eliminate this IE file on my desktop and keep it from returning?

[nukecad]

"Suggestedsites.dat" is a Microsoft file and is created when you have enabled 'Suggested Sites' in a Microsoft browser or other Microsoft app.
It may be coming from Edge, or some other MS application even though it's showing up as IE in CCleaner.
Other apps do use IE's temporary storage location for convinence.

The size of 512 KB suggests to me that it's probably empty and is just Windows putting it there in case you want to use it later.
See the link below for more about why that happens.

Some files like that do come back immediately after cleaning, but as said they have been cleaned and are empty.

Have a read of the second half of this for an explanation of what these files are, where they can be coming from, and how you can stop some of that:

 

[KenK3664]

Thanks for the reply.  I don't use any of MS's browsers and don't know where I would have set up Suggested Sites, but it still does not explain why my SurfacePro, a virtual identical OS and CCleaner program to my desktop manages to eliminate the file and show "0" after a custom clean.  My Surface pro, on the health check gets down to 1 tracker (which I understand what it is) and "0" on the others.  My desktop never gets below 5 trackers.

Edited November 18, 2021 by KenK3664

[nukecad]

You are talking about 2 different things here.

In your first post you were using Custom Clean and were seeing a file that kept coming back on the desktop computer but not on the Surface Pro, that was the 'suggestedsites' wherever that was coming from, and it's quite likely you could be getting that on one machine but not the other.
You would have to track down what app was creating it.
As well as browsers, it could be the 'news & interests' app, or possibly a 'Live Tile', or Possibly File Explorers search function (which can/does search the web), or possibly Outlook, or possibly .....
If you don't want to see it again in Custom Clean then you could pull the pathname up again in CCleaners results right-click on it and 'Add to exclude list', Custom Clean will will then ignore it (so it won't be being cleaned). Health Check will still find and clean it though.

Your Second post is talking about Health Check.
Health Check uses it's own rules, which you can't change, but again I'm not surprised that it finds different things on a desktop computer than a laptop/tablet.
They have different architectures, chips, etc. and so Windows will have installed different files on each, and create different temporary files on each.
Any other apps, browsers, etc. may/will also create different files on a desktop than a laptop/tablet, because of the different architecture in the machine.
eg. Different CPU chips, different RAM cards, different graphics processors, different sound cards, different storage drives, etc, etc.

You can't really compare the (system or temporary) files on one computer to the files on another, especially if they are different types of computer.

Although computers may all say they are running a certain version of Windows 10 and may look the same it isn't actually the same -  it's a slightly different Windows 10 depending on the architecture of the machine, and what you have installed on that machine.
And it's not just Windows, almost any app that you install will be slightly different on a different machine.

Of course you don't normally see any of those differences in use, it's when you go digging deeper into the 'internals' of what they are doing (by using something such as CCleaner) that you can see those differences.

Overall it's not something to worry about; even though they may look the same on the screen you will always see different things when you start to look deeper into different machines.

[lmacri]

Hi KenK3664:

I've never used IE11 on my Win 10 machine (including initial setup when IE11 is first launched) and I don't have Chrome installed but I do see the category Internet Explorer - Temporary Internet Files return every time I run a Custom Clean with CCleaner.  That's because a number of different programs, including File Explorer, will "borrow" files from the Internet Explorer API to add functionality (just a guess, but I wouldn't be surprised to learn that searches from the Win 10 Start menu that use Bing to suggest matches on the web even use Suggested Sites). Unlike you, however, I don't see any files being cleaned from a hidden C:\Users\<myusername>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\INetCache\Low\ subfolder.

Just some context about my own system.  I use Firefox as my default browser, and Settings | Search | Search Suggestions | Provide Search Suggestions | Show Search Suggestions in Address Bar Results is enabled (I'm not sure about Chrome, MS Edge v95 has a similar setting at Privacy, Search, and Services | Services | Address Bar and Search).  When I run a custom clean with CCleaner I clean every item associated with my IE and MS Edge browsers (recall  I don't have Chrome installed), but I stopped using CCleaner to clean my browsing history after a bug in CCleaner v5.69 damaged Firefox v79 browser extensions (see my 03-Aug-2020 post <here>) and I now have Firefox configured to clear my browsing history on exit.

When I browse with File Explorer with View | Hidden Items enabled I cannot see a hidden ‎folder called C:\Users\<myusername>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\INetCache\... . However, if I run the TreeSize Free Portable utility as an Administrator (i.e., right-click TreeSizeFree.exe and choose "Run as Administrator or launch TreeSize Free and click "Run as Administrator" in the toolbar) while View | Hidden Items is still enabled I can see C:\Users\<myusername>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\INetCache\Low\, although the only content in that subfolder is an empty container.dat file.  If you can only see your C:\Users\<yourusername>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\INetCache\Low\SuggestedSites.dat file with TreeSize Free that suggests this hidden file is a protected file owned by System and probably shouldn't be deleted using TreeSize unless you're certain this won't cause unexpected errors or glitches with any software that stores data in the SuggestedSites.dat file.

Here are a few things you can check that might be using the Suggested Sites:

Go to Control Panel | Network and Internet | Internet Options | Advanced and see if Enabled Suggested Sites is enabled.

Go to Control Panel | Network and Internet | Internet Options | AutoComplete | Settings | Use AutoComplete For and see if Suggesting URLs is enabled.  I'm not sure, but clicking Delete AutoComplete History might at least decreases the size of your SuggestedSites.dat file to 0 KB, even if it doesn't permanently remove the file.

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64-bit Win 10 Pro v21H1 build 19043.1348 * Firefox v94.0.1 * MS Edge v95.0.1020.53 * Microsoft Defender v.4.18.2110.6-1.1.18700.4 * Malwarebytes Premium v4.4.10.144-1.0.1499 * CCleaner Free Portable v5.87.9306 * TreeSize Free Portable v4.5.2.600
Delll Inspiron 15 5584, Intel i5-8265U CPU, 8 GB RAM, 256 GB Toshiba KBG40ZNS256G NVMe SSD, Intel UHD Graphics 620

[lmacri]

42 minutes ago, lmacri said:

...Go to Control Panel | Network and Internet | Internet Options | AutoComplete | Settings | Use AutoComplete For and see if Suggesting URLs is enabled....

 

Hi Hi KenK3664:

Sorry, I just noticed a typo in this path and it's too late to edit.  I should have said "Go to Control Panel | Network and Internet | Internet Options | Content |  AutoComplete | Settings | Use AutoComplete For and see if Suggesting URLs is enabled ..." as shown in my last image <above>.
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64-bit Win 10 Pro v21H1 build 19043.1348 * Firefox v94.0.1 * MS Edge v95.0.1020.53 * Microsoft Defender v.4.18.2110.6-1.1.18700.4 * Malwarebytes Premium v4.4.10.144-1.0.1499 * CCleaner Free Portable v5.87.9306 * TreeSize Free Portable v4.5.2.600
Dell Inspiron 15 5584, Intel i5-8265U CPU, 8 GB RAM, 256 GB Toshiba KBG40ZNS256G NVMe SSD, Intel UHD Graphics 620