CCleaner questions

[sesselpupser]

So I ran out of disk space on my C drive trying to download the 6GB BF3 update. This is because it's a 128GB SSD packed pretty solid with Origin games (BF3, BF1942, NFS: MW and Shift 2) as well as everything else. I've just found out that you can delete the C:/Nvidia folder, which saved me 4GB, I also ran CCleaner to clear out some other stuff and found another 2GB. I deleted something else as well so I now have 8GB free which is good. I know this is cutting it a bit fine so I think I'm going to uninstall NFS: MW.

So I have two one questions for you fine gentlemen as a result of this:

1. What's the worst that can happen if I run CCleaner's Registry fixer upper? It asks me if I want to back up the registry before it does stuff, how would I restore this backup if it screws something up? Is it reasonably easy to tell whether it's a registry issue causing problems or not?

2. Is it possible to create symbolic links to Origin games yet? I tried it once before but it didn't seem to work, the game wanted to download but when I started it downloading it said it was downloaded. I imagine there's something I don't know that you guys might. I worked this one out "for myself" thanks to this.

Yes, I'm well aware that question 1 was more than one question, but it's late and I'm braindead.

Also is it worth getting Treexy Driver Fusion (the artist formerly known as Phyxion Driver Sweeper)? It doesn't seem to have a free version and it's $17. This is on a Windows install that dates back to November 2011 which has had barely any maintenance done on it beyond the odd chkdsk, drive cleanup and graphics driver update.

Cheers guys!

 

[mp10]

Not too sure about CCleaner, I've seen it on my brother's computer so, will ask him for ya. But i do use Auslogics Duplicate file finder which is pretty helpful if you back up your memory stick and Camera now and then, and end up having a lot of duplicates. this just finds any duplicates and let's you delete them.

EDIT: forgot you mentioned it's about your SSD, so im guessing you have a second hard drive for backups etc...in that case not sure if the Auslogics file finder will help much.

 

[Infinital-NG]

I've probably run the cc cleaner registry fix over 100 times and never had a problem.

You just double click the .reg file to put what was removed back in.

 

[sesselpupser]

mp10: Thanks, but as this is my gaming computer it's literally just for games so I don't do much with any files, apart from backing up a few important saves on both drives. I will bear that in mind, though, for when I get really desperate for space so thanks for the tip.

I've managed to find 20GB after symlinking my Origin games so I'm ok for space now, I think I'll be able to keep it near that much for some time since I rarely buy games on Origin and even if I do I'll just move them to my storage drive. Apart from Origin games I might install one or two tiny programs on C, everything else is a game and that gets stuck on D. I would like to get a bigger SSD but there are more important things on my shopping list first!

I've probably run the cc cleaner registry fix over 100 times and never had a problem.

You just double click the .reg file to put what was removed back in.

Awesome, I'll blame you when everything goes wrong and I die in a fire. Thanks!


Edit: I was being a blind idiot before, there is a free version of Driver Fusion. So then I was an even bigger idiot, downloaded it and removed my graphics and PhysX drivers because I thought I was removing old versions. Still, can't hurt to have a fresh driver install, so whatever.

 

[dice1998]

As an avid CCleaner user, i've never really ran into any issues where I needed to system restore because of missing registry keys. Sometimes I lose a shortcut or two on my taskbar but nothing that warrants me to rage format . The registry mode, in my experience, mostly just gets rid of unused registry keys from deleted/uninstalled/moved items.

I would assume *if* you really goof'd with the registry that you could just system restore back.

I've never heard Treexy Driver Fusion but it looks like something good to have. 👍.

Space-wise, have you compressed the C:\ drive? That might find you some space.

 

[Sureboss]

I've never had issues with the CCleaner registry feature.

 

[RX-7_FD3S]

I've never had issues with the CCleaner registry feature.

Me neither I run it approx once a month.

 

[Infinital-NG]

I was posting on phone when I said 100 times, I meant to say that I've run it probably on 100 computers and never had a problem.

Run it twice as well. First scan usually finds the most and the 2nd one will still find some after the fact.

 

[sesselpupser]

Space-wise, have you compressed the C:\ drive? That might find you some space.

I have not, under the assumption that it might increase the time taken to do anything and possibly increasing read/write activity on the SSD which is not something I'm keen to do as I want it to live for as long as possible. Is that valid or incorrect?

Thanks for the info guys, I've not run into any problems after running CCleaner once but I'm going to do it again now, we'll see what happens.

 

[Infinital-NG]

Not knowing for sure, but I would think it wouldn't really add to read/write activities a lot.

I would think the files accessing would need more time in memory/cache functions.

Compressing the C drive would be the last last last last resort I would do.

What about your paging file? Just set it to a static amount so you know that it's a fixed size and I assume your constantly looking at your free space. You can move the your swap file to another drive if you wish. Getting it off your SSD you will lose some speed. However if your into prolonging the SSD as long as possible it might be worthy of a try to see how the system operates.

Just as example, my office computer runs 8GB RAM and I run a fixed 16GB swap file on it's own partition of my hard drive. I don't game on this, but it's something similar on my home pc.


Check out "Disk Analyzer" to find your large files
http://www.extensoft.com/?p=downloads_cnet_freediskanalyzer

Even though you probably have Hibernation turned off, the hiberfil.sys file still sits on your C:\ drive. My computer it's at 5.8GB.

Go to administrator command prompt. Windows Key + R then cmd

powercfg -h off

If you already had the disk analyzer running and looking on the c drive you'll see that file go away.

 

[sesselpupser]

Yeah, I moved the paging file to my D drive a while ago, I didn't notice any speed loss so I'm happy to leave it there. I just manually combed through some files and discovered:

- FRAPS has been making videos every time I press F11 and has been saving them on C, there was 4GB of useless crap right there.
- It was also taking lossless screenshots when I pressed F12, that was 1.15GB.
- I have 440MB of Fallout: New Vegas saves!
- I have 365MB of Fallout 3 saves!
- Terraria worlds are quite big, so they're getting deleted too.
- Somehow I have a 2GB replay file from F1 2011 and a 1.9GB replay from Dirt 3 (that's in C:\ProgramData\Codemasters)...
- iTunes keeps a cache of anything you've streamed from your iTunes purchases.
- Err... There were loads of other things in my My Documents folder from games saving their own replays and some installers. I had to do some digging but I found 500MB of Simraceway replays, GFWL installers and some other things so now I'm up to 45GB of free space.

Thank you for that link, I was wondering if there was a way to see the largest files on your drive in one place. You must've read my mind, thanks! But stop it.

 

[Infinital-NG]

When "compress the c drive" comes up it's usually best to see what is really using up hard drive space. I didn't know about the hiberfil.sys thing until the other day when I noticed it, but already had hibernation turned off.

 

[sesselpupser]

I can't see that hiberfil.sys file and it hasn't come up in my searching with Disk Analyser, but my god, there are some really weird, really big files on my PC. Like a near 2GB log file for TeamSpeak 3 and the 2GB replay files that are apparently auto-generated when you play Dirt 3 or F1 2011! I'm up to 59.1GB of free space now, that's nearly half my SSD taken up by crap. Incredible. Thanks a lot Infinital, that's 20GB you saved me directly with Disk Analyser.

Edit: I think I'm going to make a folder of shortcuts to the various replays and screenshots folders I have, so many games use F12 for their own screenshot function which is completely redundant because Steam and Afterburner are also keeping their own, compressed, screenshots. Various sims also always record replays, which is fine, but I'm never going to watch them.

 

[nick09]

I've been using it for the past 3 years. Perfectly fine to use.

 

[kikie]

Never had any problems when using crap cleaner. I don't even use the registry back up feature.

 

[dice1998]

I have not, under the assumption that it might increase the time taken to do anything and possibly increasing read/write activity on the SSD which is not something I'm keen to do as I want it to live for as long as possible. Is that valid or incorrect?

I've seen articles that say they do and I've seen ones that say that it boosts performance. From personal experience, I've compressed my SATA II Corsair Nova and didn't notice any real-time performance drops. Maybe it did slow down my read/write speeds, I don't know. But not to a point where I go "oh my god this is slow" (if this helps at all) .

 

[BobK]

Given that an SSD sector can only be written to between 3000 and 15000 times (depending partly on the device but mostly on whom you believe, the engineers or the marketing department) you're correct in wishing to minimize writes to the drive. Towards that end, see if there's any way possible to move the gamesaves and particularly the log files from the SSD to the hard drive.

As for compressing the SSD, yeah you'll see some space savings of course. A CPU can read a 500kb compressed file and expand it to 1 MB faster than the hard drive could read the 1 MB uncompressed file. But SSD's are an order of magnitude or two faster than a hard drive, particularly if you have a "consumer grade" drive. So it'd take longer to read/uncompress than just read a larger file. This negates the whole reason for having the SSD in the first place.

 

[sesselpupser]

Thanks bobk, that's pretty much what I suspected. I've moved and sym-linked all of the big non-system files that aren't BF3 (except for my GFWL DLC folder which has some Dirt 3 and Arkham City stuff that totals nearly 3GB, which I will be moving ASAP), after that it's just loads of 100-500MB folders here and there which probably total a few GB but with 60GB free now I'm not all that worried any more, that means I've still got roughly as much space on the SSD as I did when I first got my PC. I may even move Borderlands 2 and Arma 3 onto it!