How to clean the registry using ccleaner. Detailed instructions for using the CCleaner program for your computer. Deleting temporary application files

13.12.2021

Good day, dear friends, readers and random visitors. I decided to prepare detailed instructions for working with the program CCleaner. Let's look at the program's capabilities separately; I'll tell you how using CCleaner you can clear your system of junk, clean the registry, and even clear the startup list.

Most likely I will not be mistaken if I say that CCleaner- This is the most popular program for cleaning the system from garbage. The program is free, although there is a paid Pro version, but the free version is enough. For those who don’t know what CCleaner is for and what it does, I’ll explain. This program cleans your computer of unnecessary files, thereby speeding up its operation. For example, you can clean not only unnecessary system files, but also unnecessary program files installed on your computer. This especially applies to browsers. Using CCleaner, you can clear history, cookies, list of entered addresses, etc. in all installed browsers.

The second important function of CCleaner is cleaning the registry from various types of errors. And yet, there are built-in utilities, such as: “Uninstall programs”, “Startup”, “System Restore” and “Erase disks”. We will now look at all these functions in more detail and with pictures.

Download and install CCleaner

First, we need to download and install the program. The latest version of CCleaner can always be downloaded from this page http://www.piriform.com/ccleaner//download.

A new page will open and you will immediately be prompted to save the installation file. I advise you to click the “Run” button, after the installation file is downloaded to your computer, the installation of CCleaner will begin automatically.

If you saved the installation file to your computer, CCleaner installation will not start automatically; you need to manually run the installation file.

Installation is no different from installing other programs. In the first window, select the language, if necessary, and click the “Next” button.

In the next window, uncheck/check the necessary boxes and click the “Install” button.

When the installation is complete, you can leave a checkmark next to “Run CCleaner” and click the “Done” button.

That's it, installation is complete.

Cleaning your system of junk using CCleaner

You can start working with CCleaner. If the program does not start automatically, open it using a shortcut on the desktop or in the start menu.

First, let's look at the process of cleaning the system from unnecessary files. After starting the program, the “Cleaning” tab immediately opens. It is responsible for cleaning unnecessary system files and unnecessary information in installed programs.

You can use checkboxes to select where to scan and clean unnecessary files and where not. There are two tabs, "Windows" And “Applications”. You don’t have to change anything on the “Windows” tab. But I advise you to look at the “Applications” tab. For example, I use Opera, and if there is a checkmark there “Cookies”, then CCleaner will clear the cookies, but I don’t need that. By the way, I wrote in the article how to clear cookies. After you remove unnecessary items, click the “Analysis” button to start scanning.

After the scan is completed, you will see statistics. For example, I found 187 MB of unnecessary files, and I recently did the cleaning. In order to clear the found garbage, click the “Cleaning” button. A warning will appear, click “Ok”.

All found garbage will be removed.

If you are interested in the question, will the program delete the file I need? Then I can answer that for several years of using CCleaner, I have not encountered such a problem.

The garbage has been removed, now you can move on to cleaning the registry, this can also speed up your computer.

In the program, go to the “Registry” tab and to start searching for problems in the registry, click the button “Searching for problems”.

When you are finished searching for problems, click the “Fix” button.

A message will appear asking you to save a copy of the changed data. You can agree by clicking “Yes”, but if you do not want to create a copy, then click “No”. I haven’t encountered any problems with my computer after cleaning the registry with CCleaner, but anything can happen.

In the next window, click the button. After correction, the window can be closed.

Registry cleaning is complete.

Disabling programs from startup using CCleaner

Recently, in the comments, I was asked what to do if it is not possible to remove programs from startup using a standard tool? And I advised doing this with CCleaner. To which I received a question in response, but how? It’s not convenient to write about this in the comments, so I’ll tell you now how to do it. I wrote in the article how to disable programs from startup using a standard tool.

In CCleaner, go to the tab. Select the program that you want to remove from startup and click the “Turn off” button.

Additional utilities

On the tab "Service" In addition to the Startup utility, there are three more utilities.

– using this utility you can remove programs. This is similar to the standard uninstall tool in Windows.

System Restore– you can view already created recovery points and, if necessary, delete them. How to perform a system restore is written in the article

is an interesting utility that allows you to erase information both from the entire disk and overwrite a free area. Why erase free space on a disk? It’s just that after deleting a file, it is not completely deleted, you simply don’t see it, but with the help of special programs you can restore it. So, this procedure completely clears information about previously deleted files. Be careful with this utility that you do not delete information from the entire disk.

As you can see, CCleaner is very functional and useful. I advise you to do this cleaning at least once a month, and your computer will work stably and quickly. If you have any questions, ask them in the comments. Good luck!

For novice users, it may seem like a complicated and lengthy process. But there is nothing complicated here! Craftsmen have long developed special programs that will find almost all the “garbage” in your registry, and all you have to do is confirm the removal of this pile of unnecessary trash. So cleaning the registry is very easy!

Before we start reviewing registry cleaning programs, let me give you a little theory. Let's consider in general why to clean the registry and what it is, what its structure is.

The registry is a database in the Windows system. This database stores hundreds of parameters and settings of the operating system, installed programs and other data. Let's touch briefly on the topic of these programs that are stored in Windows system registry.

So, almost every program that we install on our computer enters a determination of the amount of data into the registry. But after removing this program, the data remains. It only deletes the files of its program, and not all of them, and leaves everything that it has entered in the registry in most cases. So imagine how this registry database can grow if you install and remove programs for a long time. But this is what happens, from time to time we use some on our computer, and some .

That is why you need to clean the registry once a month. Moreover, a “littered” registry database can cause poor performance. This, of course, is not a decisive factor why it might, for example, but I still recommend keeping the registry clean and tidy.

The registry has several main sections:

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT;
HKEY_CURRENT_USER;
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE;
HKEY_USERS;
HKEY_CURRENT_CONFIG.

After downloading, install the program on your computer and run it. Now I will explain to you how to correctly CCleaner clean registry.

We need to go to the “Registry” tab, make sure that opposite all the items in the parameter “ Registry integrity“check all the boxes and click the “Search for problems” button.

When the program completes the analysis, it will offer to fix the problems found. Click the "Fix" button.

We will be prompted to make backup copies of the changes we have made. As I understand it, this is just in case if after running the program the registry starts to not work correctly. I completely trust the program, so I click “No”.

We confirm the correction of the problems found, at the discretion of the program, by clicking “ Correct marked" The program will remove unnecessary things and try to fix what happens.

Do this operation to find and remove problems in the registry until everything is fixed.

Using this fairly simple utility, you can easily find what deleted programs left behind and clean the registry in automatic mode.

Of course, not always registry cleaning leads to the desired result, for example, the computer is still not stable, glitches or slows down. In this case, you need to look for a reason elsewhere. But an operation to clean the registry is still necessary from time to time.

It is also advisable to understand the registry so that, if necessary, you can not only delete something unnecessary, but also restore it, for example, after a virus attack. But that's a completely different story.

That's all for today, I hope my instructions on how to clean the registry will be useful to you. And most importantly, do not forget to scan and find problematic entries in this huge database once a month using the CCleaner program.

The registry cleaning is completed, I wish you success in completing this operation too!

CCleaner for a computer is an application that clears free space, cleans the registry, and optimizes the device for running the Windows operating system. The program is distributed free of charge and is available for download on the official website: https://www.ccleaner.com/.

It has a Russian-language interface and can be installed in a few minutes even on weak workstations, since it is not demanding on system resources

This product is installed on most home computers, but their users often know nothing about the functionality of the application or only use the “Clean” button, but this does not limit its capabilities. This article is positioned as a detailed use of CCleaner. Please read its contents carefully in order to be able to keep your computer in working order for many years.

Things to think about before cleaning

Before using the program, you should configure CCleaner for proper cleaning

After all, with the parameters set by the developers, the application deletes a lot of information, some of which may still be useful, so it’s worth pre-configuring the utility.

It’s worth starting with how to use CCleaner, or rather the browser cache, which is a collection of elements of already visited sites, used by Internet browsers to speed up the reloading of these resources. Of course, clearing this parameter will free up a lot of space on the system disk, because the cache on the computer is located in this section. But at the same time, if you delete the cache from your computer, the loading speed of web pages will drop significantly, so it is recommended to clear the cache as rarely as possible and in cases of extreme necessity, for example, when you run out of space on the system disk.

The second item that CCleaner cleans, if you use the default settings, is the thumbnail cache. It is responsible for saving miniature copies of images contained in computer folders into “Thumbs.db” files when they are initially displayed in Explorer. Deleting electronic document data will force the system to create it again, which will have a negative impact on its performance when working with catalogs containing images.

Deleting temporary application files

Using CCleaner to remove temporary application files is very easy. To do this, follow these steps:

Go to the “Cleaning” tab.
Open the Applications tab.
Check the settings you want to clear. For example, for browsers there is a cache and browsing history, download and session history, passwords and auto-filling, as well as Cookies, which will be discussed in the next section.

Advice! Think carefully before deleting certain files, because you won’t be able to restore them later. For example, for office applications it is worth saving a list of recently edited documents, and for browsers it may be critical to save passwords that could easily be forgotten and access to resources after they have been deleted will have to be restored using lengthy identity verification procedures.

If CCleaner setup is finished, click on the “Cleaning” button and wait until the process completes

Cleaning the registry

You can clean the Windows 7 registry using CCleaner through manipulation in a separate menu tab called “Registry”. This will fix some problems associated with this operating system parameter, but it is unlikely to help speed up the PC. After all, the registry contains more than one hundred thousand key entries, and cleaning it will remove a hundred or two keys, even if you clean the registry after uninstalling the program.

Before cleaning the registry, be sure to make copies of the erased keys; this action will be prompted by the utility itself, because keys that are required for the functioning of installed applications are often destroyed.

To start cleaning the CCleaner registry, click on the “Search for problems” button, and to finish, click on “Fix”

Setting up deletion of cookies

With the standard setting, clearing the cache and deleting Cookies is performed completely. Cookies are fragments of text data stored on the user’s computer and used by browsers to store personal settings of users, as well as authentication data. Cookies are cleared because there is a possibility of them being replaced with tracking cookies. which are used by scammers to track the actions of Internet users. But for trusted sites, you don’t need to delete these documents, because they significantly speed up work on the global network. Setting up CCleaner to create exceptions when deleting cookies is done using the following algorithm:

Go to the “Settings” tab.
Click on the "Cookies" link.
All available Cookies will be displayed on the right side. They will be removed by default during cleanup. To edit the list of exceptions, right-click on this list and in the drop-down menu click on the line “optimal analysis”. On the right will appear a list of cookies that the program will not delete - cookies from the most trusted sites.

Edit the list of exclusions by adding or excluding website addresses using the appropriate arrow buttons in the interface

Editing autorun

You can use CCleaner to configure applications to autostart when the operating system boots, as well as manage plugins and extensions for installed Internet browsers. The settings of these parameters significantly affect the performance of both the OS itself and browsers. To edit autorun, follow these steps:

Go to the “Tools” tab of the main menu and click on the “Startup” button.
In the window that appears, right-click on the program of interest and either turn it off or delete it. The first is preferable, because you may need to activate autorun for it in the future.

Quite often, various accompanying programs are placed in startup, installed when installing drivers for phones, printers, cameras, and so on.

These applications, as a rule, are never used, but only slow down the computer, so do not forget to regularly edit autorun

Managing installed software

Among other things, CCleaner works with simply installed programs. To manage the software, go to the “Uninstall programs” sub-item of the “Service” main menu tab. Here, not only the functionality of the built-in application removal service is duplicated, but it is also possible to rename programs. This changes the name of the utility in all lists on the computer, which can be useful when sorting applications with unclear names.

Working with CCleaner when deleting applications is no more difficult than with the built-in OS service, just click delete and confirm the action

Advice! To speed up your computer, search for and remove applications like MailGuard and Yandex Bar that are secretly installed on your computer, which you will never need and clog up your PC memory.

Erasing information without the possibility of recovery

It's no secret that when you delete files in Windows, they are not erased, but simply receive the status of deleted and are restored by specialized programs, unless, of course, the OS has managed to write anything over them.

Using CCleane, free space can be cleaned, which is guaranteed to delete this information. To this end:

Go to the main menu item “Service”.
Click on the “Erase disks” sub-item.
In the "Erase" drop-down list, select "Free space only."
In the “Method” drop-down list – “Simple overwrite (1 pass)”. Using this method is enough to reliably delete files; cleaning the disk using other methods increases disk wear. It is advisable to use them only for the purpose of hiding information from special services.

Select the drives and click on “Erase”

Erasing specific files

In addition to clearing free space, you can configure CCleaner to erase individual files using a method that will not allow them to be recovered. To this end:

Fig.1. In the “Settings” section, set the cleaning method to “Permanent erase”

In the “Inclusions” dialog, add files that should be removed when cleaning hard drives.

Fig.2. This is done using the “Add” button, which opens a directory navigation dialog to select a file

Go to the “Cleaning” tab of the main menu.

Fig.3. Open the Windows section and check the box next to “Other files and folders” located in the “Other” subsection

Now, when you run a normal cleanup, the marked secret files will be completely erased from the hard drive.

Creating shortcuts

Setting up CCleaner for Windows 7 may include creating shortcuts to quickly clean the OS with preset parameters without interacting with the program itself. To implement this:

Right-click on a free space on your desktop and the folder where you want to place the shortcut.
From the drop-down menu that appears, select New/Shortcut.
In the “Specify the location of the object” field, enter the following entry: “C:\ProgramFiles\CCleaner\CCleaner.exe” /AUTO, where C:\Program Files is the path to the installation location of the program; in your case it may be different.
Click on “Next” to complete the process.

This concludes the review of the basic functionality of the application. If you need to install CCleaner again, remember that the program distribution must be downloaded only from the official website. This will ensure that your computer is not infected with viruses.

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Any current version of Windows - 7, 8 and, of course, 10 includes and constantly uses a special settings database called the registry. It stores thousands of parameters of both the OS itself and applications installed by the user. If the system has been installed long enough, then over time a decent number of incorrect, “garbage” entries in the registry will inevitably accumulate. It is advisable to get rid of such records in a timely manner, especially on not the fastest machines. The program does an excellent job of cleaning the registry, and after it works, the Start or language bar will not fall off.

The application conventionally divides possible registry errors into 15 types, including:

missing shared dlls
invalid file extensions
type libraries
and others

To start analyzing the registry, you need to click the “Search for problems” button and after a few seconds the program will present you with a usually very impressive list. The results table consists of three columns - “Problem”, “Data”, “Registry section”. This information is enough to examine each entry in detail either superficially or directly in regedit. If necessary, you can add the necessary data to the exclusion list. Let's look further at fixing entries using the first type, “Missing Common DLLs,” as an example.

We select this type and click on “Search for problems” - CCleaner finds on the tested computer 24 incorrect, from its point of view, registry keys. To start the cleaning procedure, click on the “Fix...” button in the lower right corner. At this stage we have 2 options:

fix each problem step by step if you need the maximum level of control
select a mass correction using the “Fix marked” button

Is it safe to delete registry entries?

One of the main advantages of CCleaner as a cleaner is that it is quite difficult to harm the system. There is always a chance to delete something unnecessary, but it is extremely insignificant and will definitely not affect important Windows settings. Some of our users may say that the registry cleaning procedure itself is not necessary. If you have a modern computer, especially with an SSD on board, then yes, you can completely do without such optimizations.

We launch games or all kinds of programs, install new games, utilities, drivers or codecs, remove unnecessary programs, etc. And we do all this without thinking about what is happening in the system at this time.

For example, many do not even know that when installing almost any program, an entry is made into the so-called Windows registry (so that the system “knows” about this program), and when the program is uninstalled, these entries are deleted from the registry. True, such removal does not always happen correctly, and sometimes does not happen at all.

Not all novice users also know that some programs create temporary files on the hard drive for their work or add new entries in the same registry. In most cases, such programs themselves delete temporary files and entries, but sometimes it happens that this does not happen, and the program leaves a bunch of electronic garbage and registry errors in the nooks and crannies of the operating system.

This can happen for various reasons. For example, power outages of the computer, incorrect removal of the program by the uninstaller, errors in the programs themselves, “curvature” of drivers and a host of other reasons, not to mention the most common reason - errors by the users themselves (accidental or due to ignorance).

And some programs generally need to “clean up” the garbage behind them. For example, any browser constantly places information about visited Internet pages in a cache (memory allocated for these purposes) so that the next time it loads this page opens faster, and if this cache is not cleared, then over time there will be a lot of these entries, and this can lead to “braking” of the system.

Or even simpler - many users simply forget to empty the Recycle Bin (some don’t even know that this sometimes needs to be done), which leads to free space disappearing “somewhere” on the disk.

Those. we must understand that while we are working (or having fun) sitting at the computer, inside the system there is a constant recording (or deletion) of some files and entries on the hard drive and in the Windows registry. And if you consider that these files and records are not always deleted, then naturally garbage and errors accumulate in the system over time.

Well, as you probably already guessed, we will remove this ill-fated garbage and correct errors in the registry using a special program, namely CCleaner , which you can download.

Why is it better to remove garbage using a program? Firstly, because manually finding all the garbage is simply unrealistic, and secondly, because manually deleting registry entries is very dangerous, because By deleting just one important entry, you can disrupt the performance of Windows (then it may simply not boot).

I would also like to explain why my preference is given to the CCleaner program, because there are a lot of utilities for cleaning the hard drive and registry.

And everything is very simple! Firstly, this program is free, secondly, it is so simple and easy to use that even the most novice user can handle it, and thirdly (this may even be the most important) the program works very carefully with the registry, which allows you not to worry about possible system crashes after running the program (although, just in case, the program provides the ability to roll back to an earlier version of the registry).

I hope that these reasons are enough for you to try the program in action...

The installation of the program is standard, so I won’t dwell on it.

After installation, launch the program by clicking on its icon:

On the left side of the window we see four main sections:

Cleaning- cleaning the hard drive from “garbage”;

Registry- fixing errors in the Windows registry;

Service- additional program features;

Settings- program settings.

Having selected the first section (Cleaning), check the boxes for everything that needs to be cleaned and deleted. First, check the checkboxes on the tab Windows, and then on the tab Applications.

To make it clearer, I will briefly talk about some points.

By the way, CCleaner automatically checks which applications are installed on your computer and, according to this, creates a list with checkmarks specifically for your computer, so it may differ slightly from the list presented in my picture.

Temporary Internet files These are the files that the browser “puts” into the cache. I have already talked about this above.

Visit log is the history of the Internet pages we visit. If you do not need this list, then check the box.

Cookies- these are files that contain information about the sites we visit, for example, the login and password for entering a specific forum or site. If the browser stores such files, then when entering a previously visited forum we will not need to enter the login and password each time we visit this forum, and if the cookie is deleted, then the next time we log in we will need to enter the login and password. Therefore, you can decide for yourself whether or not to delete such files, or configure the program so that it does not delete all cookies (see Settings - Cookies).

Autofill forms– these are files that the function uses to automatically fill out forms on visited sites. For example, the password and login fields are automatically filled in when entering a website. These files are also remembered by the browser.

Saved Passwords– browsers have the ability to store logins and passwords. If you actively use this function, you can uncheck the box.

By the way, I would not recommend storing passwords and logins using browsers, because... if it malfunctions (or Windows crashes), you may lose this data. It is better to store passwords and logins completely outside the computer, or at least not on the system drive.

Recent Documents- a list of recently used Windows documents (documents you have worked with recently).

Run (from the Start menu)– a list of used commands that were entered using the Run dialog box.

Thumbnail cache- when you open any folder with pictures, a so-called Thumbs.db file is automatically created in this folder (this file is hidden). This file is required to display thumbnail images in Conductor Windows. This file is not very important, so you can safely leave the checkbox, especially since the next time you open the folder, such a file will be created again.

The purpose of other points is more or less clear from their names and therefore I will not dwell on them. Read, think and choose for yourself. Personally, I don’t use the functions of autofilling forms, storing passwords, and I don’t like storing cookies, so I generally leave all the checkboxes that the program offers at startup (by default).

After the checkboxes are checked on two tabs ( Windows And Applications) you can start the program using the button Analysis:

After analysis, we see the size of the space released by the program and information about the files being deleted. To start cleaning, press the appropriate button:

As you can see, we very quickly and easily got rid of excess garbage on the hard drive.

After this, we move on to the second section (Register), where, just like in the first section, we simply put (or uncheck) the necessary checkboxes. In most cases, you can also leave all the checkboxes and not worry about possible violations in the system.

Then press the button To correct…:

In the window that appears, we will be asked to save backup copy registry before changes are made to it:

For the first time, I recommend that you agree and click the button Yes so that the program creates a file for us with which, in the event of any failures in the system after cleaning the registry (which is unlikely), we can restore the registry.

So let's press the button Yes and in the window that opens, select the location on your hard drive where this file will be saved. As you can see, I save the file to drive D:

The program generates the file name (this scary set of letters and numbers) automatically, and therefore, having selected the save location, press the button Save, after which you can find the created file (with the extension reg):

This file will be our insurance in case of unsuccessful registry cleaning, and therefore, having created it, you can safely start cleaning the registry. To do this, in the window that appears, click one of two buttons:

Button To correct allows you to correct errors one by one, thereby viewing the details of errors found in the registry. If you want to understand what specific entries CCleaner deletes and what may cause this error, then use this button.

Button Correct marked allows you to delete all erroneous entries at once with one click, which is of course faster, but will not teach a novice user anything.

After removing all errors, click the button Close:

As you can see, there is nothing complicated in cleaning the registry with this program - everything is quite simple and safe.

But just in case, let's talk about how to return the registry to its original state if suddenly (after some time) you don’t like something about the way your computer works.

Everything is quite simple here too. We find the previously created file with a backup copy of the registry:

We click on this file to run it and agree to make changes to the registry. And in just a couple of seconds we will be informed that changes from our file have been successfully made to the registry:

After such manipulations, your registry will be the same as before CCleaner corrected the errors.

Chapter Service contains some additional features, namely uninstalling programs, managing startup, deleting restore points and wiping the disk:

It is up to you to decide whether to use these features of this program or not. Personally, I use this section very rarely, because... in my opinion, there are other programs that cope with such functions more effectively. For example, dedicated uninstallers remove programs more efficiently than CCleaner (although CCleaner uninstalls programs better and faster than Windows itself).

Well, if you don’t know how and how to delete restore points or unnecessary programs in startup, then nothing prevents you from sometimes going to the section Service and do it from here.

Well, this is where I will probably end this lesson.

I don’t consider the program settings, because... there is absolutely nothing complicated there and I am sure that you will figure them out on your own.