CCleaner?

[Snowman88]

Hi all. I was just wondering if anyone has had any experience using CCleaner on their machines? If so, I would really appreciate it if someone could answer a few questions for me.

I was recommended this program because I found a weird entry in my Add/Remove programs list, titled <no name>, which had no option to uninstall it. I ran CCleaner, allowed it to check for issues in my registry, and OK'd the resolution of all of them (it was about 105 issues, including missing DLL's, etc.). Not knowing much about the registry, I'm concerned whether I could have deleted something important in the process of doing this? In the future, is it generally safe just to OK everything that CCleaner finds? It's been a few days and things seem to be working normally; if I messed up the registry, is that something I'd know about right away or could it pop up as a potential problem later?

Thanks so much.

 

[tk11]

I've been using ccleaner for ages and have never had a problem with it. I have it scheduled to run every night at 4am. ccleaner is more focused around the "cleaner" part of the program which deals with deleting various logs, mru lists, temp files, cookies, and program history data. The "Isses" part that cleans the registry isn't very aggressive so I wouldn't worry about it much. If your concerned just save the backup data when prompted. If you have any issues just restore the backup.

 

[Rottie]

Originally posted by: tk11
I've been using ccleaner for ages and have never had a problem with it. I have it scheduled to run every night at 4am. ccleaner is more focused around the "cleaner" part of the program which deals with deleting various logs, mru lists, temp files, cookies, and program history data. The "Isses" part that cleans the registry isn't very aggressive so I wouldn't worry about it much. If your concerned just save the backup data when prompted. If you have any issues just restore the backup.

have a :beer: you are totally right :thumbsup:

 

[JK949]

Same here. It has never deleted anything it shouldn't have and I've never had an issue with it. Great piece of software for free.

 

[alkemyst]

I recently found out about this program. You need to make sure you are telling it to clean what you want it to, but when you do; it does an awesome job.

 

[WildHorse]

I'm concerned whether I could have deleted something important in the process of doing this?

Snowman88, Welcome to these forums!

Here's what to do:
(IF and only IF you have a valid Windows installation CD-ROM. I don't know what the deal is if you don't have a CD.)

Start / Run / enter this command:

sfc /scannow

notice there's one blank space between c and /. There is no space after the / and before the s.

It'll read through your Windows installation, and will prompt you to insert your Windows CD-ROM so the System File Checker can reinstall any missing or corrupted files, if necessary. In case your CCleaner adventure did not damage anything, the sfc /scannow routine won't hurt anything.

That's all. Only takes a few minutes to run,
then you'll have peace of mind that your rig is right again.

 

[Snowman88]

Thanks all for your responses - this forum is such a wonderful resource. And Scott, thank you very much for your suggestion - that sounds like a great way to restore peace of mind. Unfortunately, though, my new computer is a Thinkpad T60, and Lenovo doesn't seem to include any Windows CD's at all, so I guess I can't do that.

In the meantime, though, everyone's confidence in the program has reassured me so I think everything is OK. Everything's been working fine, and I assume that if there had been something wrong with my registry, I'd probably know about it by now (maybe I'm mistaken?).

For those of you familiar with the program, do you generally just OK every registry issue that CCleaner brings up? And also, is it normal to have some blank white spaces in the Add/Remove programs list in the "Tools" section of the program? At the very bottom, there are like 6 of them and I can click them as if they are entries. Don't want to remove them though since I don't know what they are.

EDIT: I tried running the scan that you suggested even without the CD (I know Lenovo has a lot of the Windows files installed on the computer), and it ran through a scan for about 10 minutes and then simply closed without prompting me for anything. Does that mean that it found no issues?

Again, thanks so much for the help all. It's much appreciated.