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The freeware CCleaner hasn't seen many major revisions since Piriform launched it in 2004, so when you do see a major update, you can be assured that it's going to come with impressive new tools. CCleaner 3 doesn't disappoint on that front, introducing two major new features that make it worth the upgrade.
One is a drive wiping tool that can wipe all the data from your hard drive, but can also scrub only the available free space. As with many of the tools in CCleaner, it's fairly nuanced and allows for a simple one-pass overwrite, a Department of Defense-level three-pass option, a National Security Administration-level seven-pass cleaning, and a 35-pass Gutmann-level deep scrub. The more passes you select, the slower the deletion process.
Nuanced drive wiper lands in CCleaner 3
Another key improvement to CCleaner 3 has been adding more options to pre-existing features. You can now select specific Internet cookies to keep, across all your browsers, while CCleaner deletes the rest in Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, Opera, and Safari. The benefit of this is to keep cookies for specific sites that you know to be safe, such as webmail, while getting rid of the rest that you don't want tracking you. Note that your browser must be closed for the cookie-deleting feature to work.
Other changes in version 3 include improvements to the internal scanning tech that powers CCleaner, and the interface received some minor tweaks to make icons more visible. If you're familiar with previous versions of the program, though, you'll be hard-pressed to find any differences between older CCleaners and the new one. Additional minor changes include a new native installer for 64-bit computers, and environment variables have been added for %SystemDirectory%, %SystemDirectory32%, and %SystemDirectory64%.
Version 3 supports more Windows programs than before, including added support for Microsoft Silverlight Isolated Storage, AVG 2011, Audacity, LogMeIn Hamachi, BitTorrent, and Windows Game Explorer. Pre-existing support has been improved for Google Chrome, Internet Explorer 9 beta, and the torrent managing client Vuze.
For users who are new to the program, in addition to browser tracks cleaning it will clean tracks from other programs, empty your recycle bin, delete temporary files, and clean your Registry, quickly scanning for invalid entries before removing them. CCleaner will also back up your Registry before you hit delete, in case it accidentally removes a crucial component. There's also a basic, somewhat rudimentary uninstaller for removing any program on your machine. What Registry entries it doesn't catch, the main Registry checker will, but it's a two-step process that dedicated uninstallers handle nicely on their own.
In empirical testing, CCleaner 3 appeared to be marginally faster than previous versions. This is probably system dependent, so users with older computers could likely see significantly faster scan and cleaning times than in previous versions.
Problems with CCleaner are minor at best, and it remains a highly-recommended, must-have weapon against system slowdowns, tracking cookies, and the multitudinous debris that can clutter your computer.
CCleaner-Clean up junk files and invalid Registry entries.-Download Video Previews:Publisher's Description
From Piriform:
CCleaner is a freeware system optimization, privacy and cleaning 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. Additionally it contains a fully featured registry cleaner.
What's new in this version: Version 3.14.1616 added cleaning for Chrome Canary "Network Action Predictor", cleaning for Real Player 15, PerfectDisk 12.5 and Windows Media Center, and improved Recycle Bin cleaning and duplicated filenames.
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All versions:
4.5 starsout of 6,376 votes
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Current version:
4.6 starsout of 54 votes
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My rating:
Write review
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"Keeps things running smooth"
Version: CCleaner 3.14.1616
Pros
I've used CCleaner for years and run it at least once a week. Once all the temp and junk files are gone, my windows 7 systems seems to hum along. It's a good program for what I need it for.
Cons
I have no complaints
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"CCleaner is a must try!"
Version: CCleaner 3.14.1616
Pros
It does what it say's. Cleans all the junk off my computer.
Cons
None. I haven't found anything negative about this product.
Summary
This is a great product. It's free and it works successfully on your computer to clean. I really like the wipe, it gives me extra space to add more things to my computer. Thank you so much to the company who made this for people to enjoy and its free. :)
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"I like it."
Version: CCleaner 3.14.1616
Pros
It seems to get the job done.
Cons
None yet (I've used it for several months now.)
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"Rubbish remover"
Version: CCleaner 3.14.1616
Pros
CCleaner keeps my computer running sweetly. The product's name has been changed from one that meant exactly what it did - it removes c**p!
Cons
None at all.
Summary
Use it or be daft.
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"This is a very easy tool."
Version: CCleaner 3.14.1616
Pros
Much easier to clear out cookies and cache with this than to do it manually.
Cons
None really. I don't know whether or not it is necessary to clean out registry, nor do I know what it installs on my pc.
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"outstanding product"
Version: CCleaner 3.14.1616
Pros
does everything its suppose to do i love it.
Cons
NO Con`s whatsoever i`d recommend it to anyone.
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"Remember your website passwords - you'll need them!"
Version: CCleaner 3.14.1616
Pros
free; fast; reasonably complete
Cons
some actions take a very long time without any way to cancel them or indication of what's going on
Summary
Downloading, installing and running the current version of CCleaner is another attempt to deal with a seemingly weekly occurance of the Blue Screen of Death (BSoD) on a several-year old machine running Win Vista.
I probably should mention that I downloaded, installed and ran CCleaner after booting into "Safe Mode with Networking". No problems with any of those steps. The license agreement was pleasantly brief and to the point compared with others I've seen. I had no objections to any of it.
The brief time the BSoD appears before shutdown does not really allow close persual of what upsets Win Vista, but it did not seem to be the same program traumatizing it every time. Automatic recovery, while slow, would usually restore operation - for a while. Manually using System Restore from a date several weeks before the start of the seige did not ultimately work, either.
There are four main groupings of operations. The first group deletes old files, in my case about two gigabytes worth. Some of those items were cookies left by websites, and later I had to sign in again to sites that had been using them to recognize me automatically. A nuisance since I had no idea what the passwords were (I used the "forgot password" option at each site and got new ones I won't remember. I suppose there are other sites I haven't gotten around to yet that will require the same steps).
The second option goes through the registry, in my case finding a bit over nine hundred items CCleaner didn't like (I see in other reviews that it didn't find so many, but then again I've never tried a registry cleaner on this machine before). A couple I thought were suspect, such as the ".ps" extension. It seems to me this usually means a Postscript file, and if it happens there isn't one on the machine right now that doesn't mean there won't be one in the future. So I left that one in, but I didn't really examine all nine hundred plus complaints.
The third option offered a chance to look at the stored System Restore points. I thought that might be interesting so I gave it a try. Ah, well, the "busy" icon appeared and didn't go away. Nothing else happened. This is boring, where's the CANCEL button? Mmm, doesn't seem to be one. CCleaner's not responding to CLOSE WINDOW requests, either. Huh - guess I'll have to kill it via Task Manager.
That seemed to work, but I re-booted anyway. That took longer than I expected. The cursor kept changing from the "not busy" to "busy" icon and back again. Some of the desktop icons displayed default glyphs instead of their normal ones for a while. The sidebar gadgets took a very long time to appear. I imagine Win Vista was noticing and trying to fix what it considered were problems with internal consistency.
That was yesterday. This latest boot was fairly normal as far as I could tell. Overall the system has been given a fair dusting, I would say. Whether CCleaner managed to shake out whatever was causing the many BSoD hasn't been determined yet, but I have hopes.
Updated on Jan 18, 2012
I have an old commercial utility for Win3.1 called WinDelete. Re-reading this, particularly the part about the nine hundred registry items, reminded me of the color-coding system WinDelete used for items it found during scans. Utterly safe to delete=green, use caution=yellow, be very very certain first=red.
It'd be helpful if CCleaner marked items in a similar way as well, so I'd know better what to pay attention to. Although CCleaner will tell you a bit about any individual item if asked, as it stands there seems to be no way to identify whole groups of "safe" and "not safe" to delete items. -
"its alright to used on home it really cleans."
Version: CCleaner 3.14.1616
Pros
good cleaner
Cons
traces does not clean at all
Summary
very good cleaner and i hope more features should be added. More power to CCLEANER good job.
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"great product"
Version: CCleaner 3.14.1616
Pros
everything
Cons
none it fine the way it is
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"great i love it"
Version: CCleaner 3.14.1616
Pros
easy to use, fast,
Cons
none........
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