but CCleaner is easier/faster and does it without missing anything.
Totally agree!
Again, what I REALLY like about CCleaner is you can tell it which cookies to keep whereas Disk Cleanup and most other programs delete them all. And for sure, sometimes a total purging is nice, but not always, or even most of the time, IMO.
So, for example, I have CCleaner set to keep my TPU, other forums', and other sites' cookies I visit regularly. Then, when I want to clean the clutter, I run CCleaner. But unlike Disk Cleanup, I don't have to re-enter all my log in credentials again upon my next visit to those sites. VERY NICE!!
Some may feel keeping login credentials is a risk in itself. I disagree with
MY scenario. And that is, this is my personal computer in my private home with me being the only user. There are no co-workers (I'm retired), friends, family members, or friends of family members who could step up to my computer when I was away - at least not without my prior permission and that's not happening. I have other "guest" computers they can use with my "guest" network access.
Plus, I can always manually log out of TPU or wherever and that will purge those cookies, or I can simply tell CCleaner to purge them all.
Generally, I only recommend CCleaner for cookie/clutter management and to "maintain" a working computer in optimal condition. I do NOT subscribe to any "hype" that any of these programs, including CCleaner, will make our computers run "better than ever". That's marketing hogwash.
I also do not recommend or suggest CCleaner for fixing or repairing a "broken" computer. HOWEVER - in some cases (a couple dozen actually, over the years) it has for me. BUT, these are specific circumstances always involving swapping major hardware components - specifically graphics cards from NVIDIA to AMD, or AMD to NVIDIA where some sort of corruption has occurred that was preventing the total uninstall of the old drivers, or complete install of the new. In those specific scenarios, running CCleaner's registry cleaner after running the uninstall of the old, then rebooting has allowed the install of the new card and its drivers to proceed without issues.
On "my" systems, I do run the registry cleaner after major OS updates, or major MS Office updates, for example. But this is ONLY on my machines where I have been running the cleaner since day one, again, to maintain it in optimal condition. I would not run it on a 5 year old system that has never had the cleaner used on it.
That said, I have probably, without exaggerating, run CCleaner well over a 1000 times and dozens, perhaps 100s of systems over the years and never,
not once has it bricked a computer. At worse, the system locked but cleared with a simple reboot. Still, I make sure I have a current backup - just in case. I would hate to have a power outage in the middle of a cleaning and my UPS fails to kick in.
(Had that happen once with a BIOS flash - not pretty.
)
Oh, and BTW, another nice thing about CCleaner is it always prompts to backup the registry before it makes any changes. For that reason alone, I recommend using it instead of Regedit.
Generally speaking, I do not encourage the use of registry cleaners because typically, due to the way Windows accesses registry entries, it just is not necessary. But the above examples are the exceptions and I only recommend CCleaner for that. I do not trust any other registry cleaner or "optimization" program, in part because they tend to be too aggressive while CCleaner is probably the most conservative - and that's a good thing. And it is because of that conservatism that I get really frustrated when [ignorant?] people immediately condemn CCleaner by claiming all registry cleaners are evil. True, some are. But not all registry cleaners are alike.
Ironically, many of those who automatically condemn CCleaner for its registry cleaner feature will readily recommend programs like Revo Uninstaller, Wise Program Uninstaller or IObit Uninstaller. Yet what are those but disk and registry cleaners.
It makes no sense (hence my "ignorant" moniker earlier).
Oh well. Got OT again. Time to get back on track.
