Opinions about CCleaner

[Rudi]

The shop owner does not think CCleaner is a must, what do you guys think? Cheers Dave.

CCleaner is not a must, BUT its a big plus to keep your PC running smoothly. It's like an oil change for your car. Of course there are other system cleaners like Glary Utilities, etc. I would recommend to have any one of these installed and run its default cleaning setup on a modestly regular basis.

[stuck]

...The shop owner does not think CCleaner is a must, what do you guys think? Cheers Dave.

Ask this question on the 'Other Applications' board and I'll offer an opinion there.

Ken

[viking33]

Thanks gents....no I have not run CCleaner or set the browser to delete kookies but will certainly check and correct it if the option is ticked. The shop owner does not think CCleaner is a must, what do you guys think? Cheers Dave.

Some people may think CCleaner or it's equals are not a must and let all kinds of accumulated junk pile up but I certainly think it's VERY GOOD to have and use.
CCleaner can also be set to retain your selected cookies and not delete them. At the main menu, click Options>Cookies. Then scan through any cookies listed on the left of the page. Highlight any mention of Eileen's Lounge and use the right arrow to move the cookie to the right side, where it will not be removed and will be saved for you. Do this for any other known cookies you want to keep.

[viking33]

...The shop owner does not think CCleaner is a must, what do you guys think? Cheers Dave.

Ask this question on the 'Other Applications' board and I'll offer an opinion there.

Ken

So here we all are, awaiting your opinion?

[stuck]

So here we all are, awaiting your opinion?

This is not the question that started this thread, which WAS a Lounge matter, so you'll have to wait until either an Admin moves these posts or the question is reposted elsewhere.

Ken

[HansV]

This thread was started in Other Applications as a question about remaining logged in to the Lounge. For that reason, I moved it to Lounge Matters.
The discussion about CCleaner is an offshoot, and Ken has rightly suggested that that ought to be a separate thread in Other Applications.
We may move part of this thread back to Other Applications later on, but let's concentrate on Dave's original question first.

[BobH]

OK, not Leif or any other maven, but I'm dropping my 2 pence here.

Dave, I highly recommend CCleaner. I use it every day in a scheduled task. If you download and install it, I urge you to investigate all of its features before you dismiss it.

One of the great features in CCleaner is the ability to control how cookies are deleted. You can set it to save cookies for trusted sites like Eileen's Lounge. This will mean that the auto log-in feature should work even after you've run the cleaner.

If you have questions about CCleaner after you've experimented a bit, raise them here and I'm certain that someone will be able to help you.

Here is what my cookie saver screen looks like:

CClnr.png

[HansV]

The above sequence of posts has been split off from the thread Auto logging in in the Lounge Matters forum.

[JoeP]

On a Windows system with XP or a newer OS routine use of system cleaning tools has never been shown to provide any positive benefit other than making the PC owner feel better. I have never seen any published analysis showing faster boot time, faster general PC operation, or increased PC stability through routine registry cleaning. These tools can very easily cause harm to a system. Having one or more of these tools around is fine in case you have a significant problem with a PC.

Joe

[Dave Davison]

I appreciate every post and simply repeat what I mentioned in passiong that it was the shop owner who sold me the computer who is of the opinion that progs like Ccleaner are not essential, I have used it -on & off- for years on different computers and can't recall it causing any problems and it was only a couple of weeks ago when I had Windows 7 installed in place of XP and asked the shop owner about reinstalling some of the specific freebies like Revo uninstaller; Ashampoo; Belarc advisor & the likes of CCleaner that he made the comment about freebies which - as has been stressed to me on this lounge before- can bring dubious baggage with them if one is not careful. Hense I suspect part of the reason for his caution. By the way gents, sorry for yet again changing tack during a thread when I should have started an new one in a different section. Will try to bear this in mind in future sorry Hans. Dave.

[HansV]

I've seen users complain about Office applications being slow. It turned out that their Temp folder contained hundreds of megabytes or even gigabytes of temporary files. Clearing the Temp folder did help significantly.

I've also seen users complain that some websites didn't work correctly. In many cases (admittedly not all), clearing the browser cache solved this problem.

So from experience, I think that clearing temporary folders, browser caches etc. from time to time is beneficial. This can be done manually, but CCleaner provides a convenient way of doing so with one click of a button.

Unlike some of the other tools, CCleaner is a "conservative" cleaner. With its default settings, it won't affect the working of Windows itself, and I have never seen it cause problems.

I *don't* believe that registry cleaners have any use. Unused registry entries don't do any harm, and don't cause any slowdowns. This was different in Windows 95, where the maximum size of the registry was 64 KB, so it made sense to remove unused entries there. But this limitation was lifted in Windows XP (and in Windows NT before that).

[HansV]

... he made the comment about freebies which - as has been stressed to me on this lounge before- can bring dubious baggage with them if one is not careful. Hense I suspect part of the reason for his caution ...

Yes, it is always wise to be careful when installing free software. If possible, download it from the developer's site, and not from sites offering lots of freeware. And even then, keep a sharp eye out for offers of installing extra toolbars etc.

[stuck]

When is any application 'essential'? Never! However, a PC without any applications is a bit pointless.

Application are just tools for a job and like any tool it makes sense to use them for the purpose they are designed (ever tried using a hammer when you really should have used a screwdriver?). Not everyone needs the same tools though. A carpenter would say a wood saw is essential but a jeweller might think twice before investing in such a tool.

Word processing? Umm, use a word processor but is Word NOT essential, other word processors exist.
Crunching numbers? A spreadsheet will help, take you pick from several.
Fiddling with photos? The list is long, Photoshop, Paint Shop Pro, Lightroom, Elements, etc.

I could go on but you get the point.

Which brings me to ccleaner. It too is just one of many applications designed to make it simple to clean out temp files from many different folders strewn across a PC. I like ccleaner and I use it and my experience it does the job it is designed to do it very well. I could do without it but I choose not to.

Ken