CCleaner: Get the Crap Out of Your PC Destruction the Way You Want It Joseph Moran
It's an accepted axiom that there's an inverse relationship between security and convenience when it comes to computing. To wit, a great many of the operating system features and applications most of us rely on have a real potential to compromise system security to some degree.
CCleaner (CrapCleaner) is a handy little utility designed to clean out a system and enhance privacy by getting rid of much of the potentially troublesome flotsam (better known as crap) that inevitably accumulates on computers with regular use.
CCleaner can identify and remove a variety of files and types of residual information in three basic categories. For the operating system and browser, it can erase cookies, URL history, and cached content from both Internet Explorer and Firefox. In the case of the former, it can eliminate additional treasure troves of information by deleting the AutoComplete form history and the various index.dat files used by IE (none of which are deleted when historical information is purged via the normal browser procedures). CCleaner gets rid of things like temp and log files, the list of recently-accessed documents, and Recycle Bin contents as well.
CCleaner also promises to get rid of temp files and MRUs (most recently used entries) for a number of third-party applications and utilities, including all the major media players (Quicktime, Real, Windows), WinZIP, Adobe Acrobat, Google Toolbar, and even Microsoft Office XP. Finally, CCleaner can additionally scan for and remove extraneous or orphaned Registry entries. (Note that when you tell CCleaner to clean out your Registry, you do have the option of making a backup.)
After launching CCleaner, you're presented with three tabs that let you individually analyze and scan your system for items in each of the aforementioned areas. (The tool also reports some basic system info like CPU type and speed, amount of RAM, and graphics chip present.)
For many, particularly the paranoid or those short on time, blowing away huge swaths of historical information is the best (and certainly the most efficient) way to keep your system up to snuff. However, if you want to approach the task of system cleanup with a bit more prudence, you can tweak some of CCleaner's default settings to reduce the likelihood that you'll wipe out something you may later want or need.
Case in point: While deleting all browser cookies will preclude them from tracking your Web activities, it will also ensure that you need to re-enter your login information and/or lose customization settings on all the legitimate sites you frequent. To avoid this, one of CCleaner's option menus lets you peruse your list of cookies and set aside the cookies you want to retain. CCleaner remembers the cookies you selected for protection in future sessions, which makes it a lot easier to parse the list the next time around.
You can also tell CCleaner not to delete temp files that are less than 48 hours old, since they can often be crucial to the recovery of, say, a Word file if the application hangs or crashes unexpectedly. It's also worth noting that by default CCleaner won't concern itself with anything that's not in a system or application folder, but you do have the option to add your own folders to the areas CCleaner will scan.
