Ccleaner has wrecked my system

Hi,

The title may seem alarmist as there seems to be so much support hereabouts for Ccleaner but I beleive it may be true. Let me explain.

Recently I noticed many of my icons had reverted to generic windows. So I tried a system restore. This failed with an error message saying some files could not be accessed and gave the code 0x80070005. After some advice searching I made sure I 'owned' my entire drive, turned off UAC, uninstalled antivirus software and tried again with the same result.

After more searching it was suggested that Ccleaner had deleted my c:\windows\installer folder. I looked and there was no such folder. As a result I cannot now re-install or uninstall a lot of my third party programs - including Microsoft Office . Missing icons was just the tip of the iceburg. I do believe Ccleaner is the culprit as it includes an option to turn off access to the system 'installer'.

I visited Piriform's site to discover that technical support is only offered if you pay for it .

Why would Ccleaner delete such an important folder? but more importantly how can I recover my system restore? I do not want to disable and then enable it as I need access to previous restore points (even though I don't know if this will even help).

Does anyone know of any way to regain the installation information which was held within the deleted 'installer' folder? What is a repair re-install?

I will not be using Ccleaner again and I cannot even tell them why. Imbecilic sharks.

Welcome to the forum,

"c:\windows\installer folder" is hidden by default, did you unhide folders before looking for it?

Hidden Files and Folders - Show or Hide

Also some info on repair install,

Repair Install

I would be willing to bet that CCleaner had nothing to do with your issues. The system restores and other steps you tried probably compounded what was a simple fix. Starting from the beginning, instead of a system restore, you could have just followed the steps on here to rebuild your icon cache. It's a simple batch file to download and run.

I'll add this disclaimer first...that I don't tell others to disable system restore. However, I do on my person systems because it has never solved an issue for me, and has only left systems in an unstable state for me, much like you describe. Please note, I am not telling others to disable system restore...I just do so on my own systems because I'd rather solve the issue than roll back to a spot where it can reappear.

As for CCleaner, I've been using it for years, and have never been able to destroy or damage an install by using it. It sounds more like your registry was hosed by multiple system restores and trying to take ownership of a drive you already should have had ownership of.

Rally said:

This was a surprise and frustration to me so I 're-owned' my C drive after searching here. This did the trick, or so I thought.

Here is a snip of folder owners of my C: drive


Did you change ownership of System and TrustedInstaller folders? I wouldn't have thought that was a good idea and could lead to all sorts of trouble.

I realise it's closing the stable door after the horse has bolted, but before ever I use anything like CCleaner I backup the complete registry first..........just in case.

I think it's a useful utility, but it has to be used with care.

I wonder if CCleaner is the cause of the problem. CCleaner offers to backup your changes which I always do. A double click will restore the settings later.

I'm with mjf, I think taking ownership of your disk did more harm than good. Microsoft setup windows that way for a reason, don't mess with it if you don't know what you doing, especially the system folders. Only advice I can give you, is image, image, image!

How recent are these events? You can try restoring pristine copies of reg hives from the regback folder (C:\windows\system32\config\regback) provided the copies predate the disastrous events. Heres the procedure, dont worry about the tiltle of the tut and skip steps 6,7,8 and 9 cos they dont apply in this case.

Startup Repair Infinite Loop Recovery

While Ccleaner is a useful tool in the hands of someone with experience it can be disastrous in the hands of the less skilled.

Win 7 is so much better at handling the registry that I would not recommend it and would STRONGLY suggest backing up the registry and the whole OS before if you insist on using it.