Do The System Advanced Options In CCleaner Do Any Good?

CCleaner is a free registry product that I highly recommend for any Windows users. I’ve been using it ever since it was called "Crap Cleaner" originally, and I can say without a shadow of a doubt that yes, it works. It does help keep you Windows running smoothly. It does cure slowdowns. It does speed up startup and shutdown. It does help out with all those things.

The one section most people don’t touch with CCleaner is the advanced section, in which all options by default are grayed out (but still clickable) like this:

This is what each does:

• Old Prefetch data: This is a Windows XP-only function. XP caches data about programs you use most frequently so they run faster. This should only be checked if your XP is having a legitimate problem with slowness concerning the programs you use most often. Otherwise, don’t bother with this.
• Menu Order Cache: This concerns the Start menu. If you have your Start menu programs in a specific order that you customized, checking this box will reset all items in the Start menu to the default order. Only use this if your Start menu is all screwed up.
• Tray Notifications Cache: Some think this means the "balloon" notices that come from the system tray. Not so. This refers to what tray icons you have set to hide/hide when inactive/show. It’s best you don’t check this as it doesn’t really "clean" anything.
• Windows Size/Location Cache: I use this one every time I run CCleaner. If you’ve ever run a program and the application window is completely out of view and cannot be dragged back with your mouse, running with this setting will reset all window locations to default. If you find yourself saying, "I wish Windows would just reset window locations back to where they used to be", this setting will do just that.
• User Assist History: The documentation description of this is, "User Assist History is a built-in monitoring feature of Windows that records when you access programs, shortcuts, Control Panel applets, and possibly even Web sites." I’m assuming this works in concert with prefetch noted above, so if you clear the prefetch, clear this also.
• IIS Log Files: IIS is "Internet Information Server", i.e. Microsoft web server software. You would know if you had this running or not. 99% of you probably don’t, so there’s no point in checking this one.
• Hotfix Uninstallers: This is another XP-only function. For every Windows Update Hotfix that is downloaded, an uninstaller is included. If you don’t intend on ever uninstalling any Windows Updates that are downloaded (and you probably won’t), it’s safe to remove them by checking this box.
• Custom Files and Folders: This is a CCleaner-related feature if you’ve manually set inclusions and exclusions. Almost nobody does this. I don’t. It’s OK not to check this.
• Wipe Free Space: This option on the surface sounds like a good idea. What it does is perform a "permanent delete". When you delete files from Windows, the files aren’t really gone but rather just get rewritten. Performing a free space wipe does permanently delete the files you deleted. VERY IMPORTANT NOTE: If you use this option, THIS TAKES A VERY, VERY LONG TIME TO COMPLETE. We’re talking at least one to two HOURS or more. Know this if you’re going to run this option.
• MUI Cache: (Does not appear on XP.) An MUI is when Windows extracts the "long name" from an EXE, such as Microsoft Word for winword.exe and stores it in a cache. You should run this only if you’ve uninstalled a bunch of programs recently. Being the MUIs for uninstalled programs are useless, you’ll want to be rid of them.

In the next article, I’ll show you how to perform an "Ultimate Defrag" using CCleaner and the freely available MyDefrag software. It will be good stuff – watch for it coming soon.