[raybro]

After reading all the posts in this thread, I thought to myself "perhaps I'm doing what as a young man, I saw a lot of older people do.... sticking with an old attitude regardless of what anyone, especially younger people, had to say about it". Well, I don't want to be like that, it's not the sort of attitude I've ever had much respect for and my self respect is very important to me. OK, so much for philosophizing.

I downloaded and installed CCleaner (or more accurately... RegCure) Ran a new differential backup image on my external and proceeded to run a scan with RegCure. Impressive scan... It found over 900 items , most in the registry . So then I proceeded to click the "Fix Button". What came up was an information window that informed me that the only items the utility would fix for free were Font entries and Application Path entries (of which there were none of either). It further informed me that in order to fix the remaining found entries, I would have to register the program. OK, I clicked "Yes". My browser opened and went to the RegCure site. I entered the basic info and then found that in order to obtain a license, I would have to pay $29.95 for the privileged. BUT WAIT Today ONLY I could get a great deal and pay only $10.00. Such a deal, how could I possibly pass it up . A marketing method I find to be very irritating.

So I exited the site and will run the unlicensed version to identify what RegCure considers invalid entries then use the information to manually edit, at my leisure, whatever I believe to be valid.

That completes my personal review of "Free" CCleaner (aka: RegCure). Appreciate any further thoughts about the utility. I endeavor to keep an open mind.

Raybro

[blues_harp28]

http://forums.techguy.org/all-other-...-computer.html

[raybro]

Just discovered I was a victem of a variation of the old bait and switch routine. I searched for CCleaner and was diverted to a site that looked like I was downloading CCleaner when, in fact it was RegCure.

So i'm going to mark this thread "Solved" and go give CCleaner another shot.

Raybro

[aka Brett]

I have seen alot of sites like that....you hit download it takes you to another page..you see download again ...but the download you want is a much smaller button elsewhere on the page

[raybro]

Originally Posted by brett888

I have seen alot of sites like that....you hit download it takes you to another page..you see download again ...but the download you want is a much smaller button elsewhere on the page

Yep, I KNOW that... I've seen it a number of times, but this is the first time I've fallen for it. Just goes to show ya, we are all subject to "Senior" moments. Oh well, live and learn, again and again and again.

Raybro

[raybro]

OK, I think I've got my act together now, so I reactivated this thread as it's all relavent.

I downloaded and installed the correct CCleaner program. I ran it for both the cleaner feature and Registry feature. Everything was checked except emptying the recycle bin (that's a whole nother story). Ran the analysis on both and came up with about 20Mb of invalid items. To run a fair trial, I had CCleaner delete all found entries, rebooted and set about checking things out. It was necessary for me to redo logins on various sites, but since I use Roboform, that was no problem at all. Ironically, I had more trouble getting logged onto TSG than any other site. Finally had to go to the home page and do a manual login and create a new Roboform passcard for the site.

Gotta say my machine definitely seems to run snappier in many respects. Firefox opens quicker, Word now has almost no delay when opening (it was quite slow), all programs launched came up like immediately. Now I'm going to log of and run a couple of games that have had in the past noticeable hesitations during play. I'll post back with those tests.

Of course, I'll give it a few days (or weeks) before I come to any final conclusions, but it is looking pretty good so far.

Raybro

[valis]

Quite literally, I've had to fix about 10 to an even dozen machines that have had registry 'cleaners' run on them. As I result, I tend to steer very clear of them indeed.

I am a firm believer (as are most of the techs out there) that any and all reg cleaning should be done by hand, as unless you have malware, removing old or unused keys or strings isn't going to do squat to speed up your computer once the gui is loaded. And there is simply no getting around that one.

There is an app that I do use, however, to compress the registry call ntregopt. That can drastically decrease boot times, especially if it compresses more than 5% or so.

But as for automatic reg cleaners, yeah, I know people who use them. But I know a lot more people who used to until they got bit. Nothing wrong at all with CCleaner, but I'd be pretty leery of the regcure app.

thanks,

v

[raybro]

Already got rid of RegCure and I am in general agreement with you regarding Registry cleaners. I'm giving CCleaner a tryout because I've heard some got things about it. You can be certain I have an Acronis backup image of my HDD in the configuration prior to doing this "experiment".

As i said in my last post, I ran a couple of games and the hesitations I've observed in the past are no longer happening. Makes for a more pleasurable gaming experience. Short runs, to be sure, but I'll stay on top of this until I'm either satisfied CCleaner does a good job or I restore my configuration to the condition it was in prior to doing this.

Raybro

[buffoon]

I've used CCleaner for years and can't complain. Yet!
One thing is that if you've checked the box to remind of updates in the installation wizard, they come up with a window once in a while which offers to download for you from filehippo.com. Below is the alternate click of "alternative download" which takes me to piriform.com. Since the latter are the original authors of CCleaner I choose them. Probably not important but filehiipo has the annyoing habit of offering you all sorts of other things like avg etc. Which I prefer to get from original source. Not knocking filehippo but I just don't like the take.

[raybro]

Thanks for the tip, buffoon. We appear to have similar taste in that sort of thing.

Raybro

[aka Brett]

CCleaner works great on a xp machine no doubt
I remember the very first time i used it,I was a very happy,I had about 2 years of crap to clean off....did wonders for performance

[raybro]

Originally Posted by brett888

CCleaner works great on a xp machine no doubt
I remember the very first time i used it,I was a very happy,I had about 2 years of crap to clean off....did wonders for performance

I was in a similar situation. About 2 years or so (memory is the second thing to go ) The improvement on overall performance is quite pronounced. Everything just happens faster. I'm still going to withhold final judgment until a significant amount of time has passed. One cannot check everything that may have happened in so short a period of time as a few hours.

Remarks from those such as buffoon and brett888 are very encouraging. That is not a criticism of anyone. We all go mostly with our own experiences and that is as it should be.


Raybro

[valis]

Originally Posted by raybro

Already got rid of RegCure and I am in general agreement with you regarding Registry cleaners. I'm giving CCleaner a tryout because I've heard some got things about it. You can be certain I have an Acronis backup image of my HDD in the configuration prior to doing this "experiment".

As i said in my last post, I ran a couple of games and the hesitations I've observed in the past are no longer happening. Makes for a more pleasurable gaming experience. Short runs, to be sure, but I'll stay on top of this until I'm either satisfied CCleaner does a good job or I restore my configuration to the condition it was in prior to doing this.

Raybro

smart man.

the app I use is ATF, primarily because it's got about a tenth of the footprint of CCleaner. CCleaner, IMHO, is rapidly going the way of norton. Remember when Peter Norton made all those highly cool and totally effective pc tools? Then he sold out (nothing wrong with that) but the company tried to make an app that did everything, and I mean everything, and it ended up doing nothing, and doing it extremely well.

I haven't used norton in about 6 years, so I dunno if it's gotten any better yet. I know we have a norton expert floating around these forums somewhere (always nice to have).

But for me, I've been using ATF for years now.

Another good way to create huge amount of temp files is go download largish .pdf pages and word documents; neither one of those two clean up greatly after themselves, but that's primarily due to the fact that they are asked to do so damn much it's hard to.

[raybro]

Hi valis...

I can relate. I first used Norton Utilities on a Mac at work many years ago. I was really impressed with how well they worked. Especially the defrag tool. After Symantec bought them out, they kept the name for a long time before the general public wised up that the program was no longer the same. Bloat, Bloat and more Bloat... I, too, gave up anything Symantec a long time ago.

May I ask your rationale for believing CCleaner is headed down a similar path? Have you seen it expand with useless junk and install "takeover" entries the way Symantec programs do?

Raybro

[valis]

indeed I have, raybro. Many moons ago, it was a very easy, very small, and very, very comprehensive tool that every tech should have on their thumbdrive. But then along came the regcleaner,and a zillion other options that are not necessary for an app originally designed to clear out temp files.

Which is why I switched to ATF. MUCH smaller footprint, less options, all it does is clean temp files. Only downside is I always forget to uncheck the prefetch folder, so I get the extra 30 second delay on boot.