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CCleaner: The Best Windows Clean up Software.
ccleaner.com — CCleaner is a freeware system optimization and privacy tool. It removes unused files from your system - allowing Windows to run faster and freeing up valuable hard disk space. It also cleans traces of your online activities such as your Internet history. But the best part is that it's fast (normally taking less than a second to run) and contains NO
- 1212 diggs
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- 47knight, on 10/12/2007, -5/+38Love CCleaner. Just 2 tips:
1. Always back up the registry, no matter how little items you delete.
2. And don't delete anything from the registry if your running Windows Media Center...- theBrink, on 10/12/2007, -110/+13yea, no spyware or adware and it installs yahoo toolbar without any notice to you (or if there is any, I sure as hell did not notice it and they have not gone out of their way to notice you that they are going to install yahoo crapware on my PC)
Don't see how this thing is appealing to anyone, but of course since only the supporters are visiting this thread, commence with digg down. - juneof44, on 10/12/2007, -3/+44@TheBrink
I've been using Crap Cleaner for a couple of years and as long as I can remember the toolbar being an option, it has always been the last item on the install options page. Slow down on the next-clicking and you should see it. - WhereAmI, on 10/12/2007, -3/+22Thanks for putting your comment up at the top. More will Digg you down.
I use CCleaner alot, on alot of PCs. Yes there is an obvious option to not install that toolbar. - Gathalimay, on 10/12/2007, -2/+22"yea, no spyware or adware and it installs yahoo toolbar without any notice to you (or if there is any, I sure as hell did not notice it and they have not gone out of their way to notice you that they are going to install yahoo crapware on my PC)
Don't see how this thing is appealing to anyone, but of course since only the supporters are visiting this thread, commence with digg down."
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There is a section with several check marks that said stuff like "create start-menu short cuts," "Desktop shortcuts," etc. and one of them ASKED if you wanted to install the yahoo toolbar. - shirosamurai, on 10/12/2007, -2/+8I've used CCLeaner for a long time now - great piece of software.
- zoombusa, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4@theBrink
Why not try the portable (standalone) version? - JAKN, on 10/12/2007, -7/+4anyone know how to restore stuff deleted from Windows Media Center registry?... oops.
- youmustagree, on 10/12/2007, -0/+10I have used this on many computers and never had an problem.
I use the Basic and Slim builds, which do not contain the yahoo toolbar
http://ccleaner.com/download/builds.aspx - rowanjl, on 10/12/2007, -3/+5I've only got one question: Why bother including the toolbar in the first place?
- pegisys, on 10/12/2007, -2/+9I've only got one question: Why bother including the toolbar in the first place?
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they probably get payed to do so, which I don't really mind, it's just a yahoo toolbar, it could be worst
if it helps keep the program free, I don't care as long as I have the option to not install it
- theBrink, on 10/12/2007, -110/+13yea, no spyware or adware and it installs yahoo toolbar without any notice to you (or if there is any, I sure as hell did not notice it and they have not gone out of their way to notice you that they are going to install yahoo crapware on my PC)
- mjenkins, on 10/12/2007, -13/+3I used to love CCleaner until a recent build. Since a recent cleaning using it, my computer is messed up and nothing I've done to fix it has helped.
I'll stick to other programs. - Trotterologist, on 10/12/2007, -11/+4love ccleaner
- pennyfan87, on 10/12/2007, -3/+5It includes a built-in file shredder. But this, obviously, slows down the crap cleaning process.
- xtr3m, on 10/12/2007, -11/+3Show me at least one performance test.
http://www.edbott.com/weblog/archives/000643.html- nocre, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5CCleaner does offer registry cleaning, however, that isn't its only or even primary purpose. But I have used this function now and again. Most of the time, everything continues on without a problem, but at least once I've had to do some measure of recovery work because something broke. Since then, I've primarily left this bit of it alone. The potential good it could do (which I couldn't demonstrate one way or the other) simply doesn't outweigh the potential harm and subsequent hassle.
But it is an A+ program, in my opinion. - PAqui, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2xtr3m: Show me at least one performance test (on a decent workstation) that it doesn't!
Works Great for me ... Sped up my start up time a LOT! I Recommend it :) - shreveyboy, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1even if performance doesn't improve, it atleast cleans up a good amount of harddrive space.
- nocre, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5CCleaner does offer registry cleaning, however, that isn't its only or even primary purpose. But I have used this function now and again. Most of the time, everything continues on without a problem, but at least once I've had to do some measure of recovery work because something broke. Since then, I've primarily left this bit of it alone. The potential good it could do (which I couldn't demonstrate one way or the other) simply doesn't outweigh the potential harm and subsequent hassle.
- SuperNick, on 10/12/2007, -4/+3I run Media Center Edition XP but I don't use the media center capabilties so I basically use it as XP Professional. (Media Center Edition came default on the laptop...)
I clean registry like no one's business. - TheG2, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Its a great program for cleaning out old garbage. And has some other tools on it...I use it for clients all the time to clean up random stuff they've downloaded over the years.
- keitho, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6i ran it on my parents system a couple months ago. it cleared about 4 gigs worth of old files. for a change, they are happy with me. :)
- Enendar, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4I used it on my 14 year old sister's computer and the cache from all thoes flippin myspace pages finally got cleared. I think after everything it cleared 2gbs. I love this program, install it on any computer I work on.
- Lepanto, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3The first thing you have to do on a fresh install of Windows XP is to downsize the temporary internet folder to a mere 10 or 20 MB. Then you wouldn't have to use CCcleaner that much for cleaning up that internet 'caching' folder.
- AlexMarar, on 10/12/2007, -1/+10This should come pre-installed on windows!
Great program. - jhaydon, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2I have been using CCleaner for years and its always worked quickly and extremely well. A point to be made though is that the "secure" file shredder is only a maximum of 7 passes using NSA - its not in any way secure.
Otherwise - its great software! - jeff1943, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3Great program, but I recall seeing this on digg a few weeks ago.
- bdawg923, on 11/07/2007, -20/+8This just in, George W. Bush has beat out Al Gore to win his first term as a President.
Seriously though, how old is this news, and how long ago was this program released?- GTPBearSuit, on 10/12/2007, -11/+22Agreed. I imagine on the front page of Digg tomorrow:
AdAware: Awesome Windows Spyware Cleaner
YouTube: A Great Place For Videos!
Google: You Can Find Things! - nickerbocker, on 10/12/2007, -6/+3Well maybe if CCleaner was Chad Cleaner then we would have all discovered that Gore truely won. Damn Florida.
- bdawg923, on 11/07/2007, -3/+1My comment was dugg down but yours got +diggs? wtf....
- GTPBearSuit, on 10/12/2007, -11/+22Agreed. I imagine on the front page of Digg tomorrow:
- Cruelapollo, on 10/12/2007, -12/+0Also, the internet is for porn.
- Jammerdelray, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Ccleaner is great and free, just as good if not better than webroot window washer....gets rid of alot of junk....When installing it you have the option of choosing whether or not you want yahoo toolbar installed.
- techgeek24, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0This program is very good and it does it all for free. Most of the programs i use are free openoffice, gimpshop, gaim, ccleaner, burnatonce, firefox, thunderbird, the godfather, videolan, eraser, and a-squarded just to name a few. Free programs will in my mind always be better then programs you go spend your money on.
- Urusai, on 10/12/2007, -22/+3Removing files from your HDD doesn't speed it up. I hear idiots repeat this sometimes. It would only make a difference if you had a global file tree (not the typical context-free "directory" block) with a crappy implementation (oh wait, NTFS anyone?). What will speed up your Windows computer is removing all those toolbars, search engines, kitten screen savers, and whatever else you found on the Internet and installed like the idiot you are. That includes junk with Google branding.
- MasterChief19, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4Your attitude is so pretentious it shocks me. And with my vote, youre buried. ta ra.
- socket, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Actually you're wrong, and only because you're assuming something that's just not true. You're assuming that all CCleaner does is remove files. It also cleans up your registry which can make a huge difference in startup times and other OS operations. Try to remember what the registry is and how important it is to moment-to-moment operations in a Windows environment.
I give you a gold star for being smart enough to realize that a full hard drive doesn't necessarily equate to a slow system though. Still you need to learn a little more before you open your big mouth.
- SystmBetatester, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1works great on vista RC2 as well.
- kingofthegreens, on 10/12/2007, -6/+3Who cares if it installs the Yahoo toolbar for IE? If you use IE you deserve the ***** that comes along with it. I have been using this app for about a year now and it's great, works fast and really does a good job cleaning up old 'crap'.
cheers- lament, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2as pointed out, it only installs it if you let it. just uncheck the checkbox near the bottom instead of clicking Next without looking.
- stuffhappens, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0'Takes less than a second to run'
On what planet?
(Yes, it IS a great utility - been using it for well over a year)- MikeEnIke, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Takes less than a second for me, and I'm only on an Athlon XP @ 2400 Mhz and a gig of ram. So apparently, this planet.
- TheJosher, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Takes about seven or eight seconds here, but I'm on a crappy celeron.
Less than 10 seconds isn't bad anyway!
- ramsinks.com, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Can fix many windows issues.
It does - daily. I get to hit at least 10 new PC's with it everyday.
;) - Cornloaf, on 10/12/2007, -8/+0CCleaner is crap. I just finished up a school project using CCleaner, IE Privacy Keeper, Privacy Eraser Pro, Internet Eraser, etc. I wrote up a fake Acceptable Use Policy for my fake company. As an employee, I was encouraged to download pictures of Heidi Klum and other super models but expressly forbidden from downloading images of octogenarians (look it up). After pulling up pictures of Katherine Hepburn, Angela Lansbury, and Zsa Zsa Gabor, That hard drive was then cloned for each one of the removal tools I was testing. I attempted to erase all my tracks with these freeware programs. I then used my forensic tools to recover whatever evidence I could to prove I broke the company rules.
Bottom line was that every program left behind graphic files that could be undeleted, history files that were untouched, and other traces in the cache files of both IE and Firefox. Some of the utilities deleted some cache files and left others on the drive.
The only method that wiped out 100% of my rule breaking? In Firefox I cleared all private data and in IE I cleared history, cookies, and cache. I then ran the following tool from command prompt (WIN XP ONLY):
CIPHER /W:C:
Encase and Access Data Forensic Toolkit were unable to locate any of the cached images, browsing history, or search strings in deleted files or file slack.- lament, on 10/12/2007, -3/+2I just did the following:
1. Open up IE, go to a couple of websites, close it out
2. Open CCleaner and run it, opting to remove the IE history
3. Open up IE and see that the history is wiped out
Works as advertised. - Cornloaf, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2You can see the history is gone from IE, but try browsing to the IE cache files and see that there are still files there. You will also find that undelete utilities or forensic tools will recover almost everything that it "erased".
My suggestion if you absolutely need to cover your tracks, run CIPHER after clearing your IE/Firefox history/cache/cookies within IE/Firefox itself or via some 3rd party program.
- lament, on 10/12/2007, -3/+2I just did the following:
- nogami, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Messed-up my system something fierce when "cleaned" with the default options - caused windows explorer to crash whenever I tried to browse a new folder "application terminated in an unusual way - C++ error". Had to use system-recovery to get things back to normal... Nasty.
Obviously something it deleted was hooked into windows explorer - it choose poorly...
N. - dreimanis, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3
Myth - "Registry Cleaners improve performance."
Reality - "A few hundred kilobytes of unused keys and values causes no noticeable performance impact on system operation. Even if the registry was massively bloated there would be little impact on the performance of anything other than exhaustive searches." - Source
Notes - "Registry Cleaners can fix problems associated with traces of applications left behind due to incomplete uninstalls. So it seems that Registry junk is a Windows fact of life and that Registry cleaners will continue to have a place in the anal-sysadmin's tool chest, at least until we're all running .NET applications that store their per-user settings in XML files - and then of course we'll need XML cleaners."
http://mywebpages.comcast.net/SupportCD/XPMyths.html
i recently read this and no i'm sooooo.. confused, because from the year 2000 i always thought that these things really help to speed up my computer :|- gmerin, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I love the way Windows' Registry was originally sold as a way to centralize and organize all the ini and rc file info scattered around the hard disk, and now that it's weaknesses are recognized, .Net will have us deploying XML files to correct the ills of the Registry. how long before the Registry is re-introduced with a new name to address the as yet undiscovered problems with XML files?
- decades, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2We use this at work, and the best bit of it is when you tell people to run it or that we use it.
"Honestly, that's it's ACTUAL name..." - n02p4m, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0this program help me out a lot as i install and uninstall many different applications a day and it removes all of there files that were put in the registry a little hint have a 30 day trial program install it after like 29 day uninstall it run ccleaner and it restarts with you 30 day trial.
- Splitt3rxx, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I use it all the time, it is awesome.
- gujsg, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0ccleaner rocks
- GerryDaman, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1CCleaner is a godsend. It's a great program that uses minimal resources. It's at the top of my free software list.
The Daily Kimchi - http://thedailykimchi.blogspot.com
Read about and see my pics to the DMZ. - Round11, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Wonderful application. Been using it for quite some time, and every time I run it, I see a slight performance increase while browsing the net, or running common applications.
- mlpt, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0The best Windows cleanup software of all times is still fdisk. In combination with mkwhateverfs it effectively cleans up windows :)
- PaulRay, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2People are complaining about the Yahoo Tool Bar option... The check box is right there in front of your face! Uncheck it. I did.
Now stop whining. Geez! - kamtsa, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1
From Piriform.com:
"Our costs are covered by contributions from our grateful users and from the ads you see on our websites."
Considering that they also makes money from installing yahoo toolbars on users machine, this borders with deceptions.
I call Piriform to have a more truthful and complete disclosure on their web site. - whizkid, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1This program is great. I've been having major issues with Quicktime for a long time, where I using Quicktime (whether in a browser or in MPC or for anything) my computer would choke, and it would take a solid 60 seconds just to get whatever was using Quicktime to close so that I could continue using the computer. Now I ran this program, and Quicktime works again. I'm sold.
The other thing that's nice, and that I'm sure has been mentioned is that it separates what it's looking for into lots of categories and sub-categories to allow you to customize what gets cleaned. - brotherfranciz, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I love CCleaner too... but about three weeks ago I discovered Eusing.
I downloaded some video codecs about a year ago and it completely screwed my WMP (and none of those embedded video thingys on websites worked either...), the XP search function only consisted of a blank window, and for some reason when I tried to install AutoCAD I couldn't register (another blank screen...) and thus was left with a 30 day trial...
I knew this had to do with the registry but I'm no computer whiz so I tried CCleaner, RegCleaner, and a few others... they were all pretty hopeless (except CCleaner with its other useful functions) and none of them could fix the problem...
So I ended up using iTunes (still using it - better than WMP for music IMO) and going in to uni. to use AutoCAD (many sleepless weekends...), I could live without the XP search function though...
About three weeks ago, I came across Eusing and I wasn't even expecting anything as at that point I'd already given up and was just interested in its other functions... and I tried installing WMP (I can't remember why I just happened to try installing it after using Eusing...) and to my surprise it worked! I checked out the search function and it was fine, and then I tried installing AutoCAD and was finally able to register!
I am a satisfied man now...
So if for some reason, you just happen to have a similar problem then go ahead and check it out:
http://www.eusing.com/free_registry_cleaner/registry_cleaner.htm - Leadman584, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Fantastic Program. Should be used as the first step in any clean up or repair procedure. If the system boots to windows, run this first. Typically removes 2-10GB of crap. AV/Spyware scans run faster, when not having to check all the crud. Set program to run at start up.
- kazuhima, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1does this actually erase files that were deleted from the recycle bin in the past? because i heard that even if you erase files, it still remains on the drive..
- justaboutdead, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0cause all it does is erase the entry in the file table.
- robjohnston, on 10/12/2007, -3/+0ccleaner contains a trojan, fsecure just picked it up
- hamstereater, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0because everyone knows all antivirus programs are infallible!
- bufbarnaby, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1I prefer Window Washer by Webroot...Plus I got it 4 free off Limewire years ago and it still works great.
- rado354, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Integrate CCleaner into your Windows installation CD:
http://addons.wordpress.com/2006/11/24/ccleaner-135424-slim/
The ultimate dream of every CCleaner fan:
have CCleaner installed since the first boot of Windows.
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