Crap Cleaner (CCleaner) a second look
Crap Cleaner (CCleaner) has been released in a new version just a day ago and I decided to take another look at it. I removed all options during installation except the one that would create a start menu entry in Windows - no need for additional toolbars on my system. I especially wanted to take a look at the Issues tab which someone mentioned in the comments sometime ago.
You can use Crap Cleaner to scan the Windows Registry for missing shared dlls, activex issues, unused file extensions, obsolete software and many more entries and displays them after finishing the scan. You may then click on fix all issues which prompts to backup your registry before continuing. After that the first issue is displayed with information why Crap Cleaner decided it is one.
You may clean issues individually or clean them all together. I decided to use the radical method of cleaning all 1317 issues found and was not able to witness any ill effects so far. I'm actually not sure if this has any effect on my system at all.
Sure, some registry keys got deleted, some shortcuts removed but this is nothing that effects the system at all. It does not speed things up, it does not reduce the size of the registry.
The other features that Crap Cleaner offers are nevertheless having a great effect on the system. It scans several programs like the cache of Internet Explorer and Firefox, the Trashbin and multimedia players such as the Quicktime Player for temporary files and data (like the history) so that you can remove them all in one go using the program.
Just disable a box if you do not want it to be scanned and removed. I did this for my Firefox cookies for instance. There is also an advanced tab that lets you clean old prefetch data, hotfix uninstallers and the like. Just make sure you know what you are doing before enabling those options.
Crap Cleaner has a build in uninstaller as well. It makes it easy to remove already uninstalled products from the remove software list in Windows.It is also possible to rename entries and start the uninstaller from within.
Tips
- Use CCEnhancer to add support for hundreds of applications and temporary file locations to CCleaner.
Conclusion:
Crap Cleaner is still one of the best programs to clear temporary and private data from Windows. The issues and uninstaller functionality is not needed in my opinion. An alternative for Crap Cleaner is Disk Cleaner, which concentrates on cleaning data.
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I use CCleaner and Wintools.net. I have found that Wintools.net finds and removes other stuff that CCleaner did not find. I think Wintools.net is a better piece of software but its not free.