Glo and Gman, I am 177% confident in CCleaner. I have never had it "clean" anything I ever had cause to regret. I admit I do, on occasion, tell it to backup the parts of the registry it will clean but again, it has never cleaned anything I needed and I have never used a backup. Probably 98% of what it finds is references to files no longer on the hard drive or no longer needed or references left behind after an install, update or uninstall. CCleaner also does an excellent job cleaning up unnecessary files similar to what CleanUp! 4.x or Window's own "Disk Cleanup" does. I have never regretted using this feature either. Revo Uninstaller is an uninstall utility that will first try using the programs uninstall utility, if not available, it will use XP's or Vista's uninstall utility. Afterwards, if so instructed, it will do a thorough inspection of your system and remove some, most or all of the leftovers. I always use CCleaner after all uninstalls just to be sure everything is removed. It almost always finds something that was missed by both of those. I suggest finding and downloading the "portable" version of these programs. The virtues of portability have been discussed here on several occasions so I will not repeat them now. ccleaner ver 2.22.968 - portable is available here: http://www.ccleaner.com/download/builds (so is the "normal" version) revo uninstaller is available here: http://www.revouninstaller.com/revo_uninstaller_free_download.html Don Gman wrote: > Glo, > The 'moron' in this situation is the person who had the final say on how > these infernal contraptions should be set up, many many years ago. The rest > of us are just stuck in this situation they brough about becuse they didn't > have the foresight to see just how limited their final design would be to > the incredible growth of computer technology. > > It sounds to me like you did actually get to the point of installing > that Java download, although I'd feel better about it if you'll let me have > a peek under the hood. If there's something getting in the way if it > updating properly, that should be dealt with sooner than later. > > It also sounds like you would get a TON of benefit out of running the > CCleaner utility on your system to deal with some of the mess you're talking > about here. CCleaner looks for partially uninstalled apps, orphaned files & > reg entries, Temp files, etc. and presents a comprehensive list for you to > jettison off the hard drive. Most folks are astonished at how much junk > this thing finds and removes. It's the absolute closest thing to a registry > cleaner that I'll likely ever use, but it does a whole lot more than that. > If you choose to give it a spin, be aware that the initial scan will likely > take a couple of hours to run since it look sat every file available to the > system. > > http://www.ccleaner.com/ > > Peace, > Gman > > --------------------------------------------------------------- Please remember to trim your replies (including this sentence and everything below it) and adjust the subject line as necessary. To subscribe, unsubscribe or modify your email settings: //www.freelists.org/webpage/pctechtalk OR To subscribe to the mailing list, send an email to pctechtalk-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with "subscribe" in the Subject. To unsubscribe send email to pctechtalk-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with "unsubscribe" in the Subject. To access our Archives: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/PCTechTalk/messages/ //www.freelists.org/archives/pctechtalk/ To contact only the PCTT Mod Squad, write to: pctechtalk-moderators@xxxxxxxxxxxxx To join our separate PCTableTalk off-topic group, send a blank email to: pctabletalk+subscribe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---------------------------------------------------------------