Professional Documents
Culture Documents
• File clean up
• Registry clean up
• Registry back up
• Program uninstaller
• Edit Start up entries.
Contents
CCleaner Tutorial...................................................................................................1
Installation..........................................................................................................1
Configuring CCleaner..........................................................................................2
Secure file deletion..........................................................................................3
Cookies............................................................................................................4
Include/exclude...............................................................................................5
Advanced........................................................................................................5
Using CCleaner...................................................................................................6
File clean up....................................................................................................6
Registry editor.................................................................................................8
Tools/Uninstaller............................................................................................10
Tools/Startup.................................................................................................12
Tools/System Restore....................................................................................14
Tools/System Restore
Installation
CCleaner is a great program, but there is one issue that you’ll
find with it and many other free programs. They have to make
their money somehow, and they do that by installing other
companies’ software as part of the installation. One of the
installation windows has all boxes ticked and they probably
shouldn’t be.
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Download CCleaner here. Run the download, choose your
language and follow the prompts until you encounter this
window:
You’ll notice all the boxes are ticked. The bottom one is a tool
bar for your web browser that will only slow it down. The less
toolbars you have in Internet Explorer or Firefox the better.
Configuring CCleaner
The default settings for the cleaner are pretty good for most
users, but there are some things you may want to change. On
the left-hand menu select Options
2
I tend to leave these un-ticked but you may wish to select
Secure file deletion.
3
Secure file deletion
One consideration here is disk life. Logic would say that each
overwrite contributes to wear and tear on you HDD.
4
Cookies
If you are using the cleaner daily you may want to keep cookies
from your favourite sites. Just drag them from the cookies to
delete column on the left into the cookies to keep column on
the right.
Include/exclude
Most users will have no reason to modify these settings, but the
method is fairly straight forward if you must. Simply click add
folder or add file and navigate to the folder or file you wish to
include or exclude. I don’t recommend this, as data loss is
possible if you include the wrong folder.
5
Advanced
Using CCleaner
File clean up
CCleaner’s file cleaner removes temporary files that clog your
system. Note that it only removes files from the user account
you are running. All other users must run CCleaner from their
user account.
6
I suggest you simply select Run Cleaner at the right-hand lower
corner of the window.
If you’re concerned about privacy you can tick Wipe Free Space
(at the bottom of the left-hand list), but this will severely slow
down the operation.
After you click Run Cleaner you will see the following screen:
7
This tells you how many MB of files have been removed.
Cleaning is complete.
Registry editor
The Windows Registry is a database containing the
configurations settings for your operating system and
programs. It can be manually modified by running the REGEDIT
utility built into Windows, but this is too dangerous for the
average user. Change the wrong setting and your system may
never boot again.
8
You should only need to run the Registry cleaner once, after
which you would only run it again after installing or uninstalling
large or hard-to-remove programs.
9
Select Fix selected issues
Tools/Uninstaller
You should always first try to uninstall programs with the
Windows ADD REMOVE PROGRAMS utility (located in the
Control Panel in XP, and My Computer in Vista and Windows7).
If that is unsuccessful use the unwanted program’s own
uninstaller (often located by hovering the mouse pointer over
the program’s icon in the START menu).
11
In the far-left menu select Tools then Uninstall in the adjacent
menu. A list of installed programs appears in the right-hand
column.
12
That program is now removed from your system. You may be
asked to restart your computer.
When you’ve finished you can run the CCleaner File Cleaner
and Registry Cleaner (optional) to remove any left over entries.
Tools/Startup
The last thing you want on your PC is all your programs starting
when you power it up. Depending on the programs it can slow
the boot-time immensely, and affect overall system
performance. Read here for more information about which
programs you might want starting when Windows does.
13
Below you can see a complete list of the programs starting on
my system.
14
For this example I’m disabling a Java update scheduler from
running at startup. Select the program you want to disable and
click on Disable.
Tools/System Restore
The last utility in the Tools menu is System Restore, although
the name is a little misleading because it does not restore your
system. Rather, it allows you to delete Restore Points that
Windows has made in the past. Windows periodically creates
Restore Points, which can restore your system to a good
working state if you indivertibly make changes that damage
your system.
These Restore Points can take up a lot of HDD space, but they
are there for a reason. Unless you are low on free space on
your HDD I recommend leaving them alone.
15
The top (most recent) Restore Point is faded out to avoid
complete disaster but you can remove any of the older points
(preferably the oldest) by simply selecting them and clicking on
Remove.
Select OK
16
Notice there are now only two Restore Points. Just remember
you now have one less option for recovering your system if you
harm it. If the two remaining Restore Points are corrupt you are
in trouble.
That’s it for now. I’ll re-publish this tutorial in much more detail
when time permits.
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