Problems with Ccleaner free edition...

[uberman]

Everytime I open Ccleaner to dump my cookies, trackers and whatnot it stalls asking me if I want it to close Firefox, then it asks me if I want to force Firefox to close in order to finish the cleaning. According to my observations Firefox is not running or has already been closed by me. This has been going on for a little over a month now.

I'm wondering if others are having this problem. I'm using Firefox 48.0.1 and Ccleaner version 5.21.5700 (64 bit).

I'm wondering if this is a new/recent glitch or is Firefox running at all times as spyware or what?

 

[balloonshark]

When this happens is firefox shown as running in task manager? If it is running then it's a problem with firefox.

Long shot but it didn't say anything about firefox's database needing to close did it? https://piriform.zendesk.com/hc/en-...ge-Cache-Database-even-though-Edge-is-closed-

 

[pyonir]

My first thought was check the task manager too.

What version of Windows? That might make a difference to narrow the issue too.

 

[Ketchup]

I stopped caring about cookies years ago. Do you remove the tracking cookies from your smart phone? of course not. So why do it on the PC? Don't you get tired of having to re-longin to everything (like AT) every time you run a sweep?

You are going to see ads every where you go on the internet. The tracking cookies are just making sure you see ads that might be more tempting. That's it.

 

[Mantrid-Drone]

This issue has been common with Firefox and CCleaner for ages and tends to happen when you close Firefox quicky, particularly if you're running a number of addons. If other programs are being stopped at the same time that will slow things down too. Firefox probably hasn't stopped all its processes even though you've clicked to close the browser.

Anti-virus or anti-malware programs often have web shields and other 'online line security' elements integrated with the browser which also aren't going to stop the moment you close the browser window too.

Give it thirty seconds before using CCleaner but if the problem still occurs regularly then I'd uninstall and re-install CCleaner before worrying about some other more serious problem.

CCleaner is good for cookie and restore point management, clears out stuff that even Firefox's own Clear Recent History option doesn't and its a quick and easy tool to see what's in Startup. Does lots of other stuff too.

You can whitelist cookies for the sites you regularly visit so only when those cookies expire will you have to re-sign in.

Its a very useful tool and I use it at the end of every day to do a final clean of all that rubbish you pick up when browsing before I shut down.

 

[Mike64]

As others have noted, I see nothing nefarious in the OP's post. He's just trying to run CCleaner too quickly after he closes his last Firefox window. Exactly how long it takes his OS to completely shut down Firefox of course depends on several things, most of them not under Firefox's (let alone CCleaner's) control...

I stopped caring about cookies years ago. Do you remove the tracking cookies from your smart phone? of course not. So why do it on the PC? Don't you get tired of having to re-longin to everything (like AT) every time you run a sweep?

You are going to see ads every where you go on the internet. The tracking cookies are just making sure you see ads that might be more tempting. That's it.

But when I'm not using an adblocker, I'm ignoring the ads anyway, so whether they're "targeted" or not is irrelevant... And no, I really can't say I get terribly "tired" of taking all of 5 seconds to log into the sites I use that require logging-in (not that many, anyway).

I don't own a smartphone and haven't yet replaced the tablet I lost back in April (or more precisely, which was stolen from the city bus I stupidly but inadvertently left it on instead of being turned in to the driver, unless of course the driver himself stole it...), but you can bet your bippies (whatever a bippy is) I deleted cookies from my tablet, though not quite as frequently as I do from my PC (which is very, very often throughout the day), though I also didn't use the tablet for web surfing much to begin with, and then almost exclusively to visit the same few sites. And yes, when I eventually get around to getting a smartphone, I'll do the same on that.

And no, btw, I don't own (let alone wear) a tinfoil hat and I'm not afraid of the NSA (or my ISP and the multitude of law enforcement agencies that can get at my data from them, let alone the miscellaneous "hackers" mainstream media love to terrify the general populace with.) I just don't like the idea of my web-surfing habits being monetized ubiquitously and as a matter of course (at least without even token compensation, like retailer "loyalty program" discounts) and so prefer to keep the various tracking/marketing companies' database entries for me as small as possible...

 

[bruceb]

They do make a cookie manager addon for Firefox that supposedly lets you select what Cookies to Keep
and which ones should be allowed to be deleted when Firefox closes. I have not yet had time to try it myself.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/biscuit-220876/

 

[Mike64]

They do make a cookie manager addon for Firefox that supposedly lets you select what Cookies to Keep
and which ones should be allowed to be deleted when Firefox closes. I have not yet had time to try it myself.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/biscuit-220876/

I forgot to point out in my previous post that CCleaner (also) lets you "whitelist" specific cookies. It's not always obvious which cookie(s) from a given site contain the login information, but a little trial and error solves that problem easily enough...

 

[uberman]

My version is Windows 7 Professional.
I'd check task manager and Firefox was not running, but Ccleaner said it was and needed to close Firefox.

Do you remove the tracking cookies from your smart phone?

Yep! I took care of that! I got rid of the portable phone. I got rid of tablets too, I think tablets are designed not to last.

Deleting cookies and history is just maintenance. I know we've all helped friends who don't do maintenance delete their cache and history. We help clean years of unnecessary files away. Then a defrag and things run good again.

I'll try reinstalling Ccleaner.

 

[Mike64]

My version is Windows 7 Professional.
I'd check task manager and Firefox was not running, but Ccleaner said it was and needed to close Firefox

Next time, look under the "processes" instead of "applications" tab. Its entry will disappear from the "applications" tab almost as quickly as you close the last browser window, but it sounds like, for whatever the reason, the OS is just taking a little longer than you expect to end all of the FF-related processes...

 

[TheRyuu]

Is there even a point to using CCleaner anymore with modern Windows versions? You do realize that Windows automatically cleans up most of this stuff on its own right?

 

[mikeymikec]

Is there even a point to using CCleaner anymore with modern Windows versions? You do realize that Windows automatically cleans up most of this stuff on its own right?

It's "miracle cream" software basically; business as usual for Piriform.

Deleting cookies and history is just maintenance. I know we've all helped friends who don't do maintenance delete their cache and history. We help clean years of unnecessary files away. Then a defrag and things run good again.

I'll try reinstalling Ccleaner.

On modern versions of Windows, in my line of work the only time I see a difference resulting from a defrag is when it hasn't managed to run automatically in years and fragmentation is >10%.

Deleting caches or history rarely actually makes any positive difference, because the software that uses such caches (such as web browsers) have been able to effectively manage their own caches for years now in the vast majority of circumstances.

 

[MongGrel]

I haven't bothered using CCleaner in a very, very long time. I was never a big fan the short time I did.

Just my two cents.

 

[Mike64]

Is there even a point to using CCleaner anymore with modern Windows versions?

It's very unlikely to solve any "problems" much less is it any sort of "miracle cure", but it can clear out a lot of stuff with a couple of mouse clicks while allowing customization (ie, clearing out some things but not others, whitelisting in a couple of areas, etc) and it does it on demand, without having to click through a bunch of menus in a bunch of different programs, so do I find it convenient. And it's not like it's ever caused any trouble of its own, or uses up any noticeable amount of system resources...

 

[uberman]

As long as we're talking Ccleaner...I've never found it's free space wiper to work...it shuts off always unfinished...Dereks Boot'N'Nuke went paid software...So...

What would be best choice for a very good free space drive wiper?

Thanks in anticipation.

 

[Bubbaleone]

Hang around PCs long enough and eventually one will learn why third-party tools can leave a lot to be desired. I prefer to use Sysinternals SDelete v2.0 due to it's many useful options. I also use Windows native 'cipher' command to securely overwrite disk free space with three passes (0x00, 0xFF, all random numbers). From an elevated prompt, run this simple command:

cipher /w:E

(Replace E with the actual letter designation of the drive you want to securely overwrite the free space on)

Description of the /w switch, quoted from the cipher help page:

/W Removes data from available unused disk space on the entire
volume. If this option is chosen, all other options are ignored.
The directory specified can be anywhere in a local volume. If it
is a mount point or points to a directory in another volume, the
data on that volume will be removed.

To view the entire cipher help page run this command: cipher /?

.

 

[Mike64]

To view the entire cipher help page run this command: cipher /? .

Here's the TechNet page for cipher, too.

 

[Mantrid-Drone]

Never had any problem with CCleaner free space or entire drive wiper. I've used it quite regularly for HDDs I'm going to use for other purposes and want to ensure the contents are unrecoverable. Safer than running the cipher command I would have thought too.

CCleaner registry cleaner I use once a month and ,of course, backup first but no troubles with that, ever. Whether the cleaning does any good is moot but it can free up significant space and, as I said earlier, it restore point delete option I've used regularly for that purpose. Less of a necessity now but on my ancient 40GB HDD laptop which only died a few months ago freeing up even a few hundred MBs made a very significant difference to how it behaved.

 

[Bubbaleone]

Never had any problem with CCleaner free space or entire drive wiper. I've used it quite regularly for HDDs I'm going to use for other purposes and want to ensure the contents are unrecoverable. Safer than running the cipher command I would have thought too.

CCleaner registry cleaner I use once a month and ,of course, backup first but no troubles with that, ever. Whether the cleaning does any good is moot but it can free up significant space and, as I said earlier, it restore point delete option I've used regularly for that purpose. Less of a necessity now but on my ancient 40GB HDD laptop which only died a few months ago freeing up even a few hundred MBs made a very significant difference to how it behaved.

Before spreading any more FUD about the CLI, please explain the logic/facts that you're using as to how the professional command line tools written by Microsoft, for the very same operating systems that it designs, are less safe than some third-party consumer-level GUI tool like ccleaner.

.

 

[Mike64]

Before spreading any more FUD about the CLI, please explain the logic/facts that you're using as to how the professional command line tools written by Microsoft, for the very same operating systems that it designs, are less safe than some third-party consumer-level GUI tool like ccleaner.

Given the mild, offhand nature of the comment, I wouldn't call it "FUD", but yeah, I certainly can't imagine why the OP would think a third-party tool would be "safer".

Unless maybe by "safer" he meant more effective, therefore providing more "security" that the erased areas couldn't be read with any sort of forensic tool? As far as that goes, I guess there's some logic behind the comment since CCleaner does give one the option to overwrite with a specified number/more passes than cipher does, although one could also just run cipher a second time, too. And anyway, if you're all that worried about erasing your old data, you should probably buy a new drive and take a sledgehammer to the old one after wiping it...

 

[Mantrid-Drone]

Simple answer: I mean less safe because of user mistakes. You can make mistakes manually typing in any run command. You have to know the command exists to be able to use it and use the correct syntax to make it wipe free space on a drive rather than, for instance, wipe a whole drive. There's no safety net if you've got it wrong. CCleaner puts up warning messages before doing anything: that, in my book, makes it a safer tool to use.

Many of the people here seem to be IT professionals or have probably been using run commands since they were in nappies (diapers). They forget that large numbers of people out there using PCs wouldn't even know what a run command is let alone want or need to use it.

In Windows 7 (Pro) the Run option was even left off the default start menu by those same MS professionals mentioned. Was that an oversight or an acknowledgement that operating a computer using run commands is old school and for most users rarely necessary. Particularly so when there are other tools both MS and third party available that will often run those same commands but do it for you through a safer and more informative GUI.

 

[Mike64]

Simple answer: I mean less safe because of user mistakes.

I understand what you're saying but in this case cipher isn't a general "delete" command at all (as its name suggests, it's actually an encryption command, fwiw.) So it is definitely the "safer" option in the sense you mean, since no combination of switches and/or parameters could possibly erase any existing file. In CCleaner, wiping the entire drive is one of two options in the same drop-down menu, and people have certainly been known to blithely click "OK" out of habit in response to warnings, sometimes a fraction of a second before realizing they inadvertently chose the wrong option, and sometimes not until they see the "progress" window open up and helpfully point out what the program is actually doing ( I'm not sure which, if either, is worse, but I personally always feel like a bigger ass when I realize it for myself at literally the same time I'm confirming a mistake, or in the blink of the eye afterward.)

Not to mention that most, if not all, of the Windows native commands that can do real damage also demand confirmation before actually executing, and that when you're using the command line, hitting good old <ctrl-c> can sometimes save your bacon if you realize your mistake quickly enough, while there's often nothing one can do quickly enough with a GUI-based utiity, since it takes a little while to bring up the task manager to try, if it'll work at all, to kill the offending program or process.<sigh>)

 

[lxskllr]

Do you remove the tracking cookies from your smart phone? of course not.

I treat my phone as I do all my computers. Third party cookies are blocked outright, and first party cookies are deleted on tab close aside from a very small selection of whitelisted cookies.

 

[vailr]

Try: uncheck/disable the CCleaner cookie cleaner function.
Instead, install and run SuperAntiSpyware (free edition) on a daily basis.
http://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/superantispyware_free.html
There's an option to "custom scan" to speed up the process, such as limiting the daily scan to:
c:\Users, c:\Temp (which has been re-located from c:\Windows\Temp).

 

[Mike64]

Try: uncheck/disable the CCleaner cookie cleaner function.
Instead, install and run SuperAntiSpyware (free edition) on a daily basis.

Why? The two programs serve entirely different purposes...