02-05-2021

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Ccleaner Won't Install Windows 10
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These days, it seems like every Windows user has heard about CCleaner. It’s widely recommended, online and offline—but this week, it acted as a piggyback for malware. The real question we should be asking is: do you really need CCleaner in the first place?

CCleaner Is Disk Cleanup On Steroids

Solution 10 – Check if CCleaner is already running If you can’t install CCleaner on your PC, the problem might be caused by a background process. Several users reported that CCleaner keeps running in the background, and that can prevent the installation from running. To fix this issue, you need to be sure that CCleaner is completely closed. A month ago, I wrote about how I felt Avast was ruining CCleaner, the excellent system cleaning software it took over when it acquired Piriform last year.

CCleaner has two main uses. One, it scans for and deletes useless files, freeing up space. Two, it erases private data like your browsing history and list of most recently opened files in various programs.

RELATED:7 Ways To Free Up Hard Disk Space On Windows

In a way, it’s kind of like Windows’ built-in Disk Cleanup tool, which frees up space on your hard drive by deleting useless files—old temporary files created by programs, temporary Internet files for Internet Explorer, Windows error report logs, and more. You can run this tool at any time to free up disk space.

CCleaner does do these things and more. It takes the Disk Cleanup concept and runs with it, extending it to more data in Windows and third-party programs that the Windows Disk Cleanup tool won’t touch. For example, it will erase cache files for other browsers like Chrome and Firefox, or delete the useless setup folders NVIDIA’s graphics driver installers create when you update your graphics drivers, which can consume hundreds of megabytes each.

Just select the types of data you want to delete, click the Analyze button, and look over the data CCleaner will delete. If you’re happy, click the Run Cleaner button to actually delete the selected files. CCleaner will remember your choices for next time, so you can just open it and click the Run Cleaner button in the future.

CCleaner Also Deletes Private Data

CCleaner has another purpose: it will also delete private usage data. For example, CCleaner will erase your browser history, cookies, and cache files for any browsers you have installed — Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, even Opera. It will go beyond that, erasing the cookie data stored by the Flash Player. It will even wipe out other potentially privacy-risking data, such as the list of recently opened file names in Microsoft Word, Adobe Reader, Windows Media Player, VLC media player, and other common Windows applications.

All of this is customizable, but CCleaner is set up to wipe out this data by default. Not only does CCleaner quickly wipe away useless temporary files, it’s like a sort of computer-wide “Delete my history” feature that deletes more than just your browsing data. Of course, CCleaner doesn’t know about every program you might use, so this will never be perfect.

Do You Really Need CCleaner?

CCleaner can be mildly useful, and we’ve recommended it in the past—but for the most part, it’s not something you need. There are a few reasons for this.

Deleting Cache Files will Slow Down Your Browsing, and They’ll Just Come Back Later

You could use CCleaner constantly, running it every day with the default settings. However, this would actually slow your computer down in real use. This is because CCleaner is set up to delete your browser’s cache files by default.

RELATED:Why Is My Browser Storing So Much Private Data?

Cache files are bits of web pages—images, scripts, stylesheets, HTML files, and more—that your browser holds onto. For example, when you visit How-To Geek, your browser downloads the How-To Geek logo that we display at the top of the page. It then saves this logo in its cache. When you navigate to a different page on our website, your browser doesn’t have to download the logo image all over again—it just loads the image from the browser’s local cache. Your web browser is constantly doing this with bits of different web pages, and it speeds up web page loading because your browser doesn’t have to download the same files over and over.

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However, if you were to constantly clear your browser’s cache, it would have to re-download the same files over and over. That means that clearing your browser’s cache constantly is a bad idea for performance reasons—constantly emptying the cache means you lose the benefits of having one.

Of course, the cache can also be a privacy concern. Someone with access to your computer could inspect your browser’s cache files to see what websites you’ve been visiting, just as they could look at your browser history. This is why browsers don’t save cache files when you browse in private browsing mode. But in general, if someone has access to your computer, you have far worse problems than them looking at your cache files.

CCleaner Isn’t a Great Solution for Cleaning Out Full Hard Drives

RELATED:How Much Free Space Should You Leave on Your Windows PC?

Once upon a time, when hard drives were small and computers were slow, clearing out your hard drive might have made more of a difference in your computer’s speed. But these days, you don’t need that much free space on your computer—just enough that your computer can create new files as it needs them.

While CCleaner may occasionally find some large files that free up significant amounts space (like NVIDIA’s installation files, for example), much of what it cleans up are cache files, like the ones above, that will already be deleted automatically by the system anyway—and re-created as you build up the cache again.

As a result, using CCleaner to free up space isn’t really a long-term solution—if you’re so low on space that you’re looking for solutions like CCleaner, you either need to upgrade your hard drive or delete personal files, like music, videos, or games.

CCleaner Contains Other (Mostly Unnecessary) Tools

RELATED:PC Cleaning Apps are a Scam: Here’s Why (and How to Speed Up Your PC)

Apart from its disk cleaner, CCleaner contains some other tools as well. Some, like its ability to create a list of installed programs, are useful, but can also be done with a simple command, without CCleaner. Others, like its built-in registry cleaner, are snake oil at best—and, in theory, could actually cause problems in certain situations.

It also contains an uninstaller (which doesn’t do anything Windows’ built-in uninstaller doesn’t), a startup manager (which is already built in to Windows’ Task Manager), and an interface for System Restore (again, already built in to Windows).

It does have a few useful tools, but all of them are better served by other third-party tools anyway—like finding duplicate files, analyzing your hard drive space, and securely erasing your drive. On the rare occasion you need to do these things, other programs will probably do the job better, and aren’t a great reason to install CCleaner. But they’ll do the trick in a pinch, we suppose, if you already have it installed.

If You’re Going to Use CCleaner, Use It Wisely

We’re not saying CCleaner is necessarily bad to use—it has its place, and its useful situations. But these days, you probably don’t need to run it all that regularly. We know, though, that some may want to keep it around for the occasional cleanup, so if you’re going to use it, keep the above things in mind.

Instead of just running the cleaner on its default settings, take some time to go through and select the types of data you actually want to remove. The Windows section contains options for cleaning data included with Windows, while the Applications section contains cleaning options for third-party applications you have installed. Be sure to check the Applications section — if you don’t want CCleaner constantly wiping your browser’s cache, you’ll need to disable that option there. CCleaner will also wipe out all your website logins if you have it clear your browser’s cookies, which will force you to log into websites you use over and over. That’s not very useful.

Similarly, we recommend staying away from the registry cleaner—we haven’t heard of this specific registry cleaner solving problems, but in general, we don’t recommend using them. The other tools are probably fine—but again, there are other tools out there that’ll probably do a better job, if you’re willing to try them out.

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Free Up Space

Windows has a built-in Disk Cleanup tool, and it works very well. Microsoft has been improving it, and it works even better in the latest versions of Windows 10. This tool removes temporary files, previous Windows installations, log files, old Windows updates, thumbnails, and various other cache files. If you’ve never run it, you can probably free up a few gigabytes of space by doing so. https://omgneeds.netlify.app/magnetic-torx-screwdriver-set.html. We don’t recommend a CCleaner alternative because Windows can already do a great job at freeing up space.

To access the Free Up Space tool on Windows 10, head to Settings > System > Storage and click “Free Up Space Now” under Storage Sense. Windows will automatically scan for files you can delete. Check the files you want to delete and click “Remove files” to get rid of them.

Warning: If you check “Recycle Bin,” Windows will also empty your Recycle Bin. Be sure you don’t want to recover any deleted files from your Recycle Bin before checking this option.

RELATED:Use Windows 10’s New “Free Up Space” Tool to Clean Up Your Hard Drive

On Windows 7, you can launch the classic “Disk Cleanup” tool from your Start menu to delete these files. The classic desktop Disk Cleanup tool is still included on Windows 10, but the new interface in Settings does the same thing and runs a bit faster.

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RELATED:7 Ways To Free Up Hard Disk Space On Windows

Manage Startup Programs

CCleaner can manage your startup programs, but Windows 10 has this feature built in. To access Windows 10’s startup manager, head to Settings > Apps > Startup. You can see how much “impact” apps have on your startup process and toggle startup programs on or off from here. A startup program with “high impact” slows things down more than one with “low impact.”

You can also launch the Task Manager, click the “Startup” tab, and manage startup programs from here. This works the same as the interface in the Settings app, but is also available on Windows 8. On Windows 7, you will need something like MSConfig to manage startup programs.

Clear Your Web Browsing Tracks

You don’t need a third-party program to wipe your browser history, cookies, and cache files. Your browser can handle this for you.

In fact, you shouldn’t even need to clear your browsing data in the first place. Just use private browsing mode whenever you want to access a sensitive website without any history being saved to your computer. If you never want your browser saving any private data, you can make your browser always start in private browsing mode. This is better than clearing your browsing data in CCleaner, as it prevents that data from being created in the first place.

RELATED:How to Always Start Any Browser in Private Browsing Mode

To occasionally clear your browsing data, you can use the “Clear Browsing Data” tool built into your web browser of choice. Browsers now have easy tools that can handle this in a few clicks.

We don’t recommend constantly clearing your browsing data or always running in private browsing mode. You’ll have to keep logging into the websites you use every time you open your browser, as their cookies won’t be kept on your PC. Deleting your cache files will slow down your web browsing, too. But, if you want to clear this data anyway, your browser has you covered.

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RELATED:How to Clear Your History in Any Browser

Find the Files Wasting Space on Your Computer

To hunt down what’s actually using up space on your computer, install a disk space analyzer like WinDirStat. This tool scans your hard drive and shows you a graphical representation of what’s using space on your computer, sorting folders and files from the ones using the most space to the least. This works like the Disk Analyzer tool in CCleaner, but with a better interface that makes it easier to see what’s using space.

If you have some big files hiding somewhere on your computer, you’ll find them with this tool and you can remove them manually. If the files in question are part of a program, you should uninstall the program from your computer to remove them. If they’re temporary, cache, or data files, you can probably just delete them. You may want to perform a web search for the name of the files or the folder they’re in before deleting them—just to confirm you’re not deleting anything important. Route 66 navigation download.

Some programs do waste space. For example, NVIDIA’s graphics drivers use about 1 GB of space on your computer for old driver installers. Thankfully, NVIDIA told us they now automatically delete older driver versions, so this folder shouldn’t continually grow in size. You may need to delete folders like this one manually if you’re really tight on space.

Encrypt Your Hard Disk to Really Cover Your Tracks

If you use CCleaner to delete usage data and “cover your tracks,” here’s a better option: Encrypt your system drive. Anyone who gains access to your computer will need your password to decrypt your hard disk and view your files, so this is a much better method than occasionally deleting your tracks. It will protect any private files you have stored on your computer, too.

Here’s how to enable full disk encryption on your Windows 10 PC. Some Windows 10 PCs already have encryption, while others need Windows 10 Professional to enable BitLocker. if your PC didn’t come with encryption and you don’t want to pay for Windows 10 Pro, you can use VeraCrypt instead.

Most of the same tips apply to Windows 7. You can upgrade to Windows 7 Ultimate for BitLocker or install VeraCrypt for free encryption.

With your hard drive encrypted, you don’t have to worry about erasing your private data so much—whenever you turn off your computer, its hard drive will be encrypted and people will need your key to boot it up and access your data.

How to Download an Old Version of CCleaner

If you insist on using CCleaner, you may want to install an old version of it. This isn’t necessarily the best idea—old versions of CCleaner could have problems with newer versions of programs and the Windows operating system. They might remove important files and cause problems or miss cache files and not free up enough space. New versions of CCleaner sometimes fix these issues.

If you do want an old version of CCleaner, you’ll have to download it from another website. Version 5.45 of CCleaner forces Active Monitoring, so you may want to download version 5.44 from a website like UptoDown.

To prevent CCleaner from checking for updates, launch CCleaner and click Options > Settings. Uncheck the “Inform me of updates to CCleaner” option here.

You can also disable System Monitoring from Options > Monitoring, and deactivate analytics from Options > Privacy.

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Again, this is a short term solution. CCleaner may stop working well if you stick to an old version for years.

CCleaner has quite a few tools that you don’t need, either. For example, you just don’t need a registry cleaner. While there may be some outdated entries in your registry, they take up a miniscule amount of space and don’t slow your computer down.

For anything else in CCleaner you might want, you can find a CCleaner alternative. For example, if you want a list of the programs installed on your computer, you can save a list of your installed applications with a single Windows command. To find duplicate files on your PC, you can install a duplicate file finder. For anything else, you can find a built-in Windows utility or a free application that won’t nag and monitor you.

Image Credit: ben bryant/Shutterstock.com.