Why is CCleaner considered crap?

[soonerproud]

As soon as you said "as soon as you said avast lost your attention, you lost my attention" you lost my attention :shiftyninja:

I was never paying attention anyway.

[ViperAFK]

System Restore? Lol turn this off from the start as it serves no purpose other than to screw things up even more. First thing I do when I install a OS is turn this feature off.

Yeah but it's likely the user whose pc you are cleaning had it on...

[Obi-Wan Kenobi]

I too use ccleaner on one of my flash drives...I take it with me just for a quick, portable clean-up of a customer's machine, or one of my own, if needed...however, since I discovered how well DiskMax does the job, I've slowly found myself leaning toward it more and more. As far as reg cleaners go, I don't see much point in using them. I mean, with stuff like Revo Uninstaller, it makes reg cleaners pointless, as it does what I need, and at the end of the day, that's all that matters.

[ESC@PE]

I have it installed on all my machines too. Works well for wiping the crap left behind when web browsing.

[cacoe]

The biggest thing I find that I need to do on anyone's machine which is a few years old with no maintenance is disable certain startup apps, remove endless toolbars and empty out gigabytes of temp stuff that's accumilated and I must say there is definitely a noticeable difference after using ccleaner to clear out temp folders, especially on Windows XP.

[Dashel]

I'll step up and say while I like CCleaner for certain targeted actions, its a far cry to say that 1) say EVERY PC needs it and 2) That users in general should be using it for 'maintenance' . Its at best an easy way to clean up temp and startup items but far too many people install it locally and just run it with default settings. I can only shake my head at any tech who does such things under the auspices of desktop maintenance.

[+Warwagon MVC]

System Restore? Lol turn this off from the start as it serves no purpose other than to screw things up even more. First thing I do when I install a OS is turn this feature off.

Every time I hear this I just shake my head.

[kalel83]

Ok guys. I've read almost every comment on the front page regarding the Top 10 apps which shouldn't miss (https://www.neowin.net/news/top-ten-freeware-apps-that-no-pc-should-be-without) , and most people were attacking CCleaner.

I just wonder why?

I know that it has several problems with the registry.

But I, with several computers, have never experienced any kind of problems, even using recklessly the registry feature. (Vista - 7 PCs)

So, why? BSOD, programs crashing? Never experienced them...

it was most likely bashed because a noob can completely destroy their pc with it, which in my opinion is not the apps fault (does that make regedit bad as well?)

[+Warwagon MVC]

For some reason when it deletes the temporary internet files it TAKES forever to do so. But if I were to local the content.ie5 folder and do myself (including hidden folders) all the files delete SOOOOOooo much faster. So I usually just clean that folder and the temp folder by hand, then run ccleaner for the rest

[ddiggity]

I love CCleaner. You have to realize the C stands for CRAP right? Crap Cleaner was the first iteration of the program.

+1

CCleaner(or crap cleaner) has been a part of my desktop for a few years now with no complaints. It has helped me clean my computer from one central place on my computer and search my registry which I like.@hwarwagon, I don't use it really for a registry cleaner but, like using it for searching the registry. Also, I agree with you that their cleaner tool is what makes this application worth it(which is most of my use anyway). And with the support for the new browsers http://www.softwarecrew.com/2011/03/ccleaner-3-05-adds-supports-for-ie9-firefox-4/ I have had no complaints.

[Lamp0]

Why does CCleaner have a registry cleaner if it is so pointless? I mean it's free software so it's not like they are trying to trick consumers into buying it?

[cork1958]

CrapCleaner is simply awesome. An absolute "must have"

I use it religiously without even thinking twice about backing up what it's about to remove even after doing a brand new install and getting all updates. I also use Registry Clean Expert once in a while to get the down and dirty stuff CrapCleaner misses. Never had an issue with that one either.

To anyone that thinks registry cleaners are junk, that probably explains why you people are formatting, or suggesting to everyone to format, whenever an issue comes up. ;)

[soldier1st]

System Restore? Lol turn this off from the start as it serves no purpose other than to screw things up even more. First thing I do when I install a OS is turn this feature off.

System restore partially works under XP but under Vista/7 it works fine. Though it is safe to keep it on XP still as it can keep copies of drivers and if something goes wrong then you can revert to the previous driver. if it's disabled you can't do that.

[+Warwagon MVC]

CrapCleaner is simply awesome. An absolute "must have"

I use it religiously without even thinking twice about backing up what it's about to remove even after doing a brand new install and getting all updates. I also use Registry Clean Expert once in a while to get the down and dirty stuff CrapCleaner misses. Never had an issue with that one either.

To anyone that thinks registry cleaners are junk, that probably explains why you people are formatting, or suggesting to everyone to format, whenever an issue comes up. ;)

Well don't just say that. Give examples why reg cleaners are so awesome.

[lalalawawawa]

To anyone that thinks registry cleaners are junk, that probably explains why you people are formatting, or suggesting to everyone to format, whenever an issue comes up. ;)

:laugh: :rofl: :laugh:

[ShiFteDReaLitY]

I find it pretty useful.. deletes cache and entries for you instead of having to doing it manually. I have never had it mess up my PC at all, if someone did they must have not done it right :p

[+Warwagon MVC]

:laugh: :rofl: :laugh:

Yep Apparently a registry scanner will magically fix very serious issues.

[johnporter29]

I love CCleaner and it's all my systems. Use it to clean crap off and to clean the registry after uninstalls and it's never caused me any problems whatsoever.

[Hardcore Til I Die]

unused registry entries doesn't really matter in your ability to search the registry, since the registry is sorted alphabetically and in tree form. even if they're there, for an EA game for example it'd still beunder /ea/ and the further dub dirs.

I said search not browse :p

Search as in Ctrl+F. Faster search results, less data to look through = time saved (even if only a little).

The way I see it is that it's worth cleaning the registry even if the benefits are only small, as it doesn't do any harm.

[HawkMan]

I said search not browse :p

Search as in Ctrl+F. Faster search results, less data to look through = time saved (even if only a little).

The way I see it is that it's worth cleaning the registry even if the benefits are only small, as it doesn't do any harm.

limit your searches to the actual user readable parts of the registry, the only parts that are slow to search is the part that's full of hash keys and hardware stuff. as long as you stay there it will search the section in no time at all, it's a basic b3 search, about as fast as they get.

[justlooking]

I don't think the difference between 220,000 and 230,000 registry entries make much of a speed difference. Occasionally there's a registry entry or 2 that needs to be deleted, then a registry search engine comes in handy.

[Growled Member]

If/when I do use CClean, it's mostly system cleaning. I rarely (almost never) use the registry cleaner anymore. I really couldn't tell the difference.

[Dermot]

CCleaner was good at the days of XP where registry writing and deleting was a task even a child could perform so the windows registry got messed up and CCleaner was a good application, However now in the days of Vista and Windows 7, registry access is much more tighter and more likely to not have issues so in that case a registry cleaner is not needed.

Security has peaked so much in the last 4 years (IE is not as open as fish net tights now), these registry programs are not needed, however other functions can still come in handy like the add/remove manager, disk space cleanup, etc, same as other applications along these lines like hijack this.

I actually started building my own version of CCleaner in C#, not to replace it, but to learn more about the windows system and it's garbage collection and policies and functions.

It's tricky and you can't please everyone with these types of programs, the people who complain are the tech savvy who shouldn't need these in the first place.

[Seizure1990]

Tbh, the Program Uninstaller feature alone makes the program worth it.

I'm still not sure why it takes MS so long to populate the list when a third party application can do it instantly.

[+Warwagon MVC]

Tbh, the Program Uninstaller feature alone makes the program worth it.

I'm still not sure why it takes MS so long to populate the list when a third party application can do it instantly.

Because they want to give you more information than you actually want. all anyone ever wants is just a list of the installed applications on the computer, but instead Microsoft takes The time to tell you how big each app is and how often you use it, as if any of us care.