How I Free'd Almost 150GB From HDD

fredc said:

OK , here are the facts gentlemen :

From the Eset security forum

SCR

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Posted 25 March 2015 - 11:42 PM
As of about the last six months to a year CCleaner is now bundled with a toolbar that ESET is correctly blocking as a PUP (Potentially Unwanted Program) which is kind of ironic that a cleaner program brings garbage when installed.

You can download CCLeaner Slim which is just the installer and not the toolbar please note that Piriform releases the slim version one week after the Standard version. It is possible that no download link is available for the Slim version during that gap time.

I think the latest was today so give it about a week then do a search for "CCLeaner Slim".

@SweX.. ahh we collide on this one, LOL

Taking these facts at face value, I see no indication that "bundling" means installs without the user's consent. Normally, I interpret "bundling" as extras that are presented with a checkbox to opt out of with. Usually, IME, PUPs are classified that way to alert users of a potentially unwanted program that they may have unkowingly installed because they blew past the checkboxes without realizing the consequences. I would take it that most of the respondents in this thread would see the checkboxes and opt out if they wish to do so but it wouldn't suprise me if ESET (which is known for agressive identification) flags these just to serve the lowest common denominator who may have let the PUP unknowingly get by them.

I interpret the ESET forum post to mean download the Slim version if you don't want to deal with the checkboxes when you install from, e.g., a flash drive bag of tricks or send to your grandmother (not to stereotype) to install for her to clean up her system without getting the PUPS.

vgchat said:

Here's what I do for cleaning my PC about every 2 weeks.

Go to programs & features - sort by date. Look for anything I didn't install or don't want anymore.
Run windows disc cleanup
Follow up with CCleaner Pro
Run a quick scan with BitDefender
Optimize all of my imported images from my phone with jpegmini for jpegs, pnggauntlet for pngs & gifmicro for gifs
Finally I finish up with a Defrag with Piriform Defraggler

I haven't derfragged my drives for ages, actually, after first year of Win7, specially not with third party programs. Despite several changes of Windows and Linux and terabytes of data going thru them they never went over 2% of fragmentation. Some fragmentation or what third party program perceive as fragmentation, is actually beneficial, MS Office and data base programs intentionally leave empty space on the disk after data files so it can be filled up at later date as necessary and so speed up writing and reading of those files. Third party defragmenters can actually slow down those programs. SSDs that are more and more prevalent for OS at least, can be ruined by defragmentation. Even in older windows, XP and before, fragmentation under 15% didn't hinder disk performance and was considered a non issue. Every time you do full disk derfagmentation it makes it work as hard as if you emptied and than filled up the drive again and that puts a lot of strain on it. Even HDDs have a finite number of cycles and heads have to work a lot do move those files and parts of files from one part to another temporary part of disk and than again to their destination. That's heck of a more work than normal use even if badly fragmented.
Defragmenting often may leave disk nice and tidy looking but in fact just shortens it's life and in some cases even slower than before. Windows 7/8/8.1/10 have quite good automatic defragmentation that does not put much strain on disks and does just right amount of defragging, unlike third party programs that have to prove to you they are doing something useful.

CountMike said:

Some fragmentation or what third party program perceive as fragmentation, is actually beneficial, MS Office and data base programs intentionally leave empty space on the disk after data files so it can be filled up at later date as necessary and so speed up writing and reading of those files. Third party defragmenters can actually slow down those programs.
Every time you do full disk derfagmentation it makes it work as hard as if you emptied and than filled up the drive again and that puts a lot of strain on it. Even HDDs have a finite number of cycles and heads have to work a lot do move those files and parts of files from one part to another temporary part of disk and than again to their destination. That's heck of a more work than normal use even if badly fragmented.

Very interesting
Someone on sevenforums a while back said running sfc /scannow too often was also hard on the drive. Usually only run it when I suspect a problem but MS hit us with an update (KB3022345 - enables the Diagnostics Tracking Service) some months back that caused, should I say false positives for "utc.app.json" & "telemetry.ASM-WindowsDefault.json". So I became a bit more aggressive with sfc scans. Not anymore.

So I have now turned off the schedule for defrag as well & will see what it looks like over the course of the next few months. Before upgrade to WinX.

thanks

OldMike65 said:

If you own CCleaner Pro you don't need to go to their web site for latest release, All I need to do is ask CCleaner to check for update, and if it finds a newer release, it installs it, closes program running, installs, reopens. No pups, or any crap just updates itself, no menu to check for pups......just updates itself.

Downloaded from MajorGeeks, it offered to install Google Chrome but it's very conspicuous and easily avoidable. It does have a nuisance default feature, automatic monitoring of the system.

OldMike65 said:

If you own CCleaner Pro you don't need to go to their web site for latest release, All I need to do is ask CCleaner to check for update, and if it finds a newer release, it installs it, closes program running, installs, reopens. No pups, or any crap just updates itself, no menu to check for pups......just updates itself.

Standard, free version has auto checking for updates turned on by default.

dogpark said:

Very interesting
Someone on sevenforums a while back said running sfc /scannow too often was also hard on the drive. Usually only run it when I suspect a problem but MS hit us with an update (KB3022345 - enables the Diagnostics Tracking Service) some months back that caused, should I say false positives for "utc.app.json" & "telemetry.ASM-WindowsDefault.json". So I became a bit more aggressive with sfc scans. Not anymore.

So I have now turned off the schedule for defrag as well & will see what it looks like over the course of the next few months. Before upgrade to WinX.

thanks

Yes, I forgot about sfc/ scannow, it also goes thru a lot of data but only for system files and not all and there's no real need to use it unless a problem is suspected. Other than for that reason, I use it just before making monthly system backup to make sure all is clean and in working order. Many third party programs supposed to keep clean, fast or whatever, find "problems" and do "maintenance" quite unnecessarily just to justify their existence and in many cases their price. MS has built in the windows enough (and in some cases even not really needed) automatic or manual maintenance tools. Many people don't even realize how much windows changed since W95/98 and even XP and some "advice" found on internet is laughably out of date. "Advice" about SSD is notoriously outdated and only stuff put up about SSDs last year or so should be considered but very carefully because there is so much misguidance about them. The truth about them is that with W7 SP1 and up installed on modern (last couple of years) SSDs should not be considered any different than HDDs of same size. So only tweaks pertaining to space savings are of any value.