Can you have too many File000.Chk, Desktop.ini and Thumbs.db?

Any automated registry cleaner carries with it a some level of risk and (in most cases) no performance gain.

But - cleaning the registry makes some people feel good - so CCleaner includes a very conservative registry cleanup tool.

If you have an application that did a poor job of uninstalling, then there can be junk left behind in the registry. If you let CCleaner clear out what it finds from that bad uninstall, then you manually search the registry for remains of that bad install, you will probably find junk that CCleaner does not clean out. CCleaner is just not that aggressive of a cleaner.

I would like to see someone benchmark the performance and restart times of a computer that has years of use, never had its registry cleaned by a "registry cleaner". Then use a tool like CCleaner to only "clean" the registry. Do not clear temp files or defrag the drive - only benchmark before/after "cleaning" the registry.

That said, there are a few registry entries that can cause start up delays. An automated registry cleaner might find those for you, or might not.

I've used CCleaner's registry "cleaning" tool because I learn from what it shows me and I'll accept the risk of what it could barf. I just don't suggest that others use CCleaner's registry "cleaning" tool.


Even CCleaner's temp file cleanup tool is conservative. There are a few types of temp files that it does not remove by default. (e.g. orphaned MS Office temp files - the ones that begin with ~$) I'm not even sure that CCleaner will get rid of those files ending in CHK. You tell us

As for which functions to safely use - run the cleaner and leave the other parts of the app alone. The other parts are good if you want to work thru some specific errors or problems with the help of those in this forum.

Dear lovely people that responded prior,

I am just going through some old items for one last big tidy up on my desktop.

I am just enquiring as per the information provided in the posts on this subject.

1. Do not manually remove Thumbs.db as they will be required to be rebuilt and possibly cause issues.
2. It will be a great idea and use CCleaner - but not the registry module as that is not recommended.
3. Desktop.ini - well I am not too sure still on the issues if I should remove them - I have attached some snips - and some show the location. I recently had a try of downloading a program so I could retrieve .chk file and noticed that when I extracted from the .exe from the zip file that I ended up with a .ini file. It seems to have some information in it as it is not 1KB.

Could someone just clarify what I should do, so I do not damage the operation of my computer.

I recently also thought that I may have made such a big error I restored all the files from my recycle bin.