Another piece of unnecessary software?

This topic has 17 replies, 9 voices, and was last updated 8 years ago by D-Dan.

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February 2, 2018 at 3:40 pm #16508
Bob Williams
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@bullstuff2
Forumite Points: 0
When even Techradar offers stuff like this, it makes you wonder how “professional” and “unbiased” the advice in their newsletters might be.

http://tinyurl.com/y9c35cb3

Lots of users with little or no tech knowledge will download this. Techradar really ought to be offering ways to carry out the tasks this software does, from within Windows. For free. Years ago, in my first ventures into computing, I would probably have bought stuff like it: in fact I know I did. And Iolo does not have a very good track record:

http://tinyurl.com/yda3bhyx

Just a wee moan, although I would like to bet that techradar get something out of pushing it.

When the Thought Police arrive at your door, think -
I'm out.
February 2, 2018 at 4:17 pm #16514
Richard
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@sawboman
Forumite Points: 16
Bob, I agree, mind you I also wonder what is the price of snake oil these days? I feel like a sales drive once I can find a few carpet-bagging sales people.
February 2, 2018 at 4:24 pm #16515
Dave Rice
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@ricedg
Forumite Points: 7
I remember having massive arguments with Slipstreem over this sort of stuff.

Pure snake oil.
February 2, 2018 at 4:41 pm #16516
Richard
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@sawboman
Forumite Points: 16
Yes Dave, once registry cleaners were a hot idea. I tried one. The cleaner certainly worked, my office suite did not! I vowed never again.
February 3, 2018 at 3:16 pm #16536
Bob Williams
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@bullstuff2
Forumite Points: 0
Agree with the above, but my point is that this is something that is aimed at those with poor Tech knowledge and very basic computer knowledge. IMO, it is just outside genuine fraud.

As I said, at one time I would have probably downloaded something like it. Anything that messes with the Registry is a no-no, from bitter experience.

When the Thought Police arrive at your door, think -
I'm out.
February 3, 2018 at 4:19 pm #16543
Alan Wood
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@alanrwood
Forumite Points: 0
Used the Ccleaner registry cleaner on 10 machines for years without a single problem. Choose the backup before action option and any registry entries are saved in a .reg file first. To restore it takes a double click on the reg file and you are back to square one. Never needed it though.

I do agree that some Reg Cleaners are far more aggressive so I have stuck with this one.
February 3, 2018 at 5:45 pm #16548
Bob Williams
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@bullstuff2
Forumite Points: 0
I used to use Ccleaner once Alan, but I now use the “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” method. There is a decent programme within Kaspersky that I can use now and again:

Click on “Show 5 more” and there is more usable stuff.

When the Thought Police arrive at your door, think -
I'm out.
February 3, 2018 at 6:18 pm #16549
Dave Rice
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@ricedg
Forumite Points: 7
Why does anyone want to clean it in the first place?
February 3, 2018 at 7:16 pm #16551
Alan Wood
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@alanrwood
Forumite Points: 0
Tidyness I suppose and a hangover from when I bought my first 40MB hard drive and space was valuable and expensive and CPUs were very much slower.
February 3, 2018 at 7:50 pm #16554
Ed P
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@edps
Forumite Points: 39
Dave Rice wrote:

Why does anyone want to clean it in the first place?

About the one time I would consider it is after a PUP or virus has been detected and cleaned. It sometimes pays to clean up to prevent reinfection. CCleaner would be my choice in that situation, otherwise I would leave well alone.
February 4, 2018 at 12:18 am #16556
keith with the teef
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@thinktank
Forumite Points: 0
Actually slipstream was on the ball with under the hood stuff from time to time.

Things have defo moved on from then, so under the hood cleaner stuff is now de-funked for the most part. 🙂

So here we Was and in 2017 and I manged to turn a W764 PC into a bonafede hifi. When I thought I had done it before.

You know when you have done it balls to bone and as you would expect with the flexibility of a PC you can tune it, and No. I’m not talking about a GFX equalizer. No. I’m talking about the ASIO driver adjustments.

Screw buying stuff off the shelf.

As I recall slipstream was also like me a frustrated PC audio/hifi enthusiast.

But for the most part its down to the capabilities of the DAC and what equipment is available off the shelf and the depth of your pocket. 🙂
February 24, 2018 at 11:55 pm #17099
Wheels-Of-Fire
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@grahamdearsley
Forumite Points: 4
Another pice of useless software is the memory “optimizer”.

The Windows memory manager does a pretty good job of keeping potentially usefull data in physical memory. You will seldom see much memory marked as actually free because Windows will quickly reasign it to other things like the super fetch cache.

Windows will also keep recently released memory on a standby list for a while before zeroing it for use by other processes, just in case its needed again soon.

The memory optimiser just starts a process that demands the maximum amount of committed memory possible. The memory manager is forced to use all the free memory, then its cached memory, then memory from any other processes that are active but idle until no more can be allocated.

At this point the memory optimizer terminates its process leaving you with a large amount of free and totally empty memory that will now have to be refilled with usefull data.

And they ask you to pay for this service !
February 25, 2018 at 11:08 am #17108
blacklion1725
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@blacklion1725
Forumite Points: 2
I generally keep Ccleaner around, don’t use the registry cleaner but the general cleaner seems to work quicker the the Windows Disk Cleanup and the tool to overwrite “empty” file space (to prevent file recovery of stuff you want to stay deleted) is quite handy.
February 25, 2018 at 12:12 pm #17109
Bob Williams
Participant
@bullstuff2
Forumite Points: 0
I use Windows Disk Cleaner and the tools in Kaspersky Total Security to keep the lid down. If I have to mess with the Registry, I am very cautious. I certainly would not let Third Party software play in Registry. (Bitter experience when I first started with Pooters!) Most of those third party tools, use Windows DC and other Windows features, anyway. WDC may be slower, but it does a thorough job. I always do 2 backup Macrium Reflect images when I use WDC: one before and one after.

When the Thought Police arrive at your door, think -
I'm out.
February 25, 2018 at 2:32 pm #17116
Wheels-Of-Fire
Participant
@grahamdearsley
Forumite Points: 4
I have also wondered how usefull disk scrubber programs are on an SSD, espesially with TRIM enabled.

Is there any way to recover data from flash ram that has been erased ?
February 25, 2018 at 2:49 pm #17118
Ed P
Participant
@edps
Forumite Points: 39
“Is there any way to recover data from flash ram that has been erased ?”

Apparently this caused forensic investigators a lot of trouble initially and initially the problem was thought intractable. In fact completely over-written SSD data is still snoop-proof, but simply reformatted data can be recovered fairly easily, albeit a time consuming and not necessarily a perfect restoration). There is however a problem in over-writing SSDs as the trim process is such that it is difficult to ensure EVERY byte is over-written and a special program for writing huge file random data might be required and the erase might take over an hour to perform.
February 25, 2018 at 5:17 pm #17121
Wheels-Of-Fire
Participant
@grahamdearsley
Forumite Points: 4
I thought i was fairly safe Ed because a few months ago I deleted a batch of files from my SSD and then did nothing special except use my computer for a couple of days.

Out of interest i then ran the Recover program from the makers of CCleaner using its deep scan option and all it found was a couple of file names that it said were beyond recovery.
February 25, 2018 at 8:58 pm #17128
D-Dan
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@d-dan
Forumite Points: 6
I used to use CCleaner regularly, not just for the registry, but general crap.

Then I switched to Linux and no longer need the snake oil.

Arch Linux, on a Ryzen 7 1800X, 32 GB, 5 (yes -5) HDs inc 5 SSDs, 4 RPi 3Bs + 1 RPi 4B - one as an NFS server with two more drives, PiHole (shut yours), Plex server, cloud server, and other random Pi stuff. Nice CoolerMaster case, 2 x NV GTX 1070 8GB, and a whopping 32" AOC 1440P monitor.
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