I hear a considerable amount of talk about how good CCleaner is. Some computer users have a 'thing' about crap, going into each folder looking for stuff which they think that they no longer or never did need. It can become an obsession.

So I downloaded CCleaner to see what it could do and, to conduct the test fairly, I ran it as most users would, making no changes to the default setup. It tells me that I gained 406mb hard drive real estate, but what did it cost me?

It removed..

1. registry entries, but only safe ones which were not affecting anything, and don't take up much space anyway
2. file history in Wordpad, which takes up little space and means that I now have to find the files I use regularly to get them back in the list
3. URL history.. which uses up virtually no space but includes all of the URLs I visited yesterday, but did not save as favourites
4. the password for my customized ISP home page, such that when my home page loaded after cleaning, it was not what I expected to see as it was now the default ISP home page
5. Thumbnail caches which do take up real estate, but that also enable Windows to redisplay graphics files quickly if a folder containing pictures, clipart etc is opened

Overall, I successfully managed to do not a great deal except to make life more difficult. Were I to uncheck the items which have made life more difficult for me, running CCleaner would have achieved NOTHING AT ALL.

Anyway, I have decided that I too will free up some hard drive real estate. It involves going into Control Panel > Programs and Features where I will highlight CCleaner and then select UNINSTALL..

Job done..