CCleaner Assembled by Dale Cockle, 27 June 2010 <http://www.piriform.com/ccleaner> CCleaner
is a great tool for cleaning your Windows PC. It protects your privacy
online and makes your computer faster and more secure. Easy to use and
a small, fast download. It's divided into four major sections:
Getting Started: Once
installed, the default settings are quite useable, especially when
cleaning up a computer to give away or otherwise dispose of. However,
for your everyday maintenance, I recommend unselecting Cookies in both
the Cleaner Windows tab and in Cleaner Applications tab for all
installed browsers. I like my good cookies and don't want to lose them.
I let Malwarebytes kill the bad cookies, If you use the Recent
Documents feature, you may consider unselecting Recent Documents in
Cleaner Windows tab. Below are screen shots representative of the four sections. Under each screen shot, I've added additional notes pertinent to the screen shot. Cleaner  CCleaner Cleaner Windows This screen shot represents the first thing one sees when CCleaner is launched. Here is where you cahnge default settings to those you desire. As noted above, I'd uncheck Cookies in this tab. Don't run Cleaner yet until you check/change selections in the Cleaner Applications that's next.  CCleaner Cleaner Applications Click on the Applications tab to get to this screen shot. Again, I recommend unselecting Cookies in both the Cleaner Applications tab for all installed browsers. The selections you've made in the last two screen shots will be remembered the next time you launch CCleaner. At this point, you're ready to click on Run Cleaner. You'll see a warning but say OK.  It'll clean out everything related to your selections, and will not cripple your computer, For many users, this is all they use CCleaner for. I urge you to continue, and clean your Registry too. Registry  CCleaner Registry Don't make any changes to these selections. It's ready to run. Click on the 'Scan for Issues' button. After the bar at the top reaches 100%, the scan is complete and you can then click on the 'Fix selected issues' button. Immediately you'll be presented with this display:  Click yes and save on the Desktop (to simplify deletion after a successful reboot later.) Then click on the 'Fix All Selected Issues' button in the next window, then click on the 'Close' button.  At this point, repeat this process to run another scan and fix as described above except there's no need to backup the changes to the registry this time. Keep doing it until there are no more issues found. At that point, your Registry clean is complete, and your maintenance is complete. If so, Simply close CCleaner. The next time you reboot Windows, if all is well, you can delete the backup file you saved on the Desktop. Tools  CCleaner Tools Uninstall I use this in place of Windows Add/Remove Programs (Programs and Features in Vista and Win7) because it's so much faster and more info about each item is presented.  CCleaner Tools Startup I use this in place of Windows MSCONFIG's Startup tab to disable unnecessary stuff from launching at Windows startup. It's easier, more info is presented, and there's an extra option to delete an entry.  CCleaner Tools Restore I've Never used this feature to go back to an earlier Restore Point. I've had no need since I started using CCleaner because I try to solve a specific problem rather than falling back on going back in time. It appears that many more restore points with additional info are displayed. Options  CCleaner Options Believe it or not, I've never looked at any of these options. Feel free to browse among thm to see what's there, but if you follow the suggestions above, you'll probably never need to look in Options. Closing Comments I run CCleaner as described above about one a week as a preventative maintenance tool. I also run a Malwarebytes Qucik Scan after running CCleaner. Why after? After CCleaner's cleanup, there's less for Malwarebytes to scan. Meanwhile, I also run an AV program and a firewall as other legs to the Security 'stool'. Enjoy CCleaner. (CCleaner.htm) |