SirCleaner Released - New Powerful Junk File Cleaner

@SirShane,

Thank you for the update on the latest improvements to SirCleaner. I would second the suggestion that you release what you have done, and hide the Help menu for now, then work on the Help.

Personally, I don't think the ability to see the cleaning rules should be a Pro feature. I do agree with the sentiment that software creators should get paid, and I put my money where my mouth is.

My reason is that not all people, myself included, want to check everything without knowing what SirCleaner is doing, and trust to a recent system image if things go wrong. A lot of folks don't even have a backup strategy. If the free version of SirCleaner nukes their computer, telling them that consulting the cleaning rules in the Pro version would have prevented that, is going to give SirCleaner a bad "rep."

To attract more paying customers, SirCleaner needs to be transparent as to what it is cleaning. I think the program will enjoy much more credibility that way. That will entice people to upgrade to take advantage of the additional Pro version features. I really like the idea of a browser compacting feature that you have designed for the Pro version. I will give that a whirl when the new update is released.

I am sure, as you develop SirCleaner, you will come up with more ideas for Pro features.

Just my two cents. Have a great day.

Regards,
Phil

garioch7 said:

@SirShane,

Thank you for the update on the latest improvements to SirCleaner. I would second the suggestion that you release what you have done, and hide the Help menu for now, then work on the Help.

Personally, I don't think the ability to see the cleaning rules should be a Pro feature. I do agree with the sentiment that software creators should get paid, and I put my money where my mouth is.

My reason is that not all people, myself included, want to check everything without knowing what SirCleaner is doing, and trust to a recent system image if things go wrong. A lot of folks don't even have a backup strategy. If the free version of SirCleaner nukes their computer, telling them that consulting the cleaning rules in the Pro version would have prevented that, is going to give SirCleaner a bad "rep."

To attract more paying customers, SirCleaner needs to be transparent as to what it is cleaning. I think the program will enjoy much more credibility that way. That will entice people to upgrade to take advantage of the additional Pro version features. I really like the idea of a browser compacting feature that you have designed for the Pro version. I will give that a whirl when the new update is released.

I am sure, as you develop SirCleaner, you will come up with more ideas for Pro features.

Just my two cents. Have a great day.

Regards,
Phil

Click to expand...

Thats a good point. I will keep the view cleaner rules a free feature.
I will have a test build soon.

@SirShane ,

Thank you for your reply. I look forward to the test build. I will give it a spin.

Have a great day.

Regards,
Phil

SirCleaner v2.7.0 Test Build

Current Change Log:

New pro feature, Compact Browser Databases.
This tool will scan known browser storage locations for every single database file used, show the min amount of drive space saved, but also can help make the browsers faster by having the databases smaller and not using wasted space.

New feature, you can right click on any item in the cleaning list and view its cleaning rules.

New default colors for the program. Users who update can go to colors and choose Default from the color preset drop down list to set the new colors.

Improved Firefox Cache cleaning.

Fixed bug with "Other User Profiles" feature if a user’s profile folder was different than their username.

Improved "Other User Profiles" feature to now detect the apps to clean from the other user profiles if enabled.

Added new preview control to Find Duplicate Files tools. Clicking on a file in the results will now show a preview if supported on the system.

Title bar updated to now change colors when it loses focus when opening another window in the program, making it easier to see which window has focus.

Main program window can now be resized smaller than before and now shrinks itself if too large to fit on the screen. This is for people with lower resolutions and dpi set above 100%

Removed 450 games from the cleaner, kept a few popular ones and all game launchers. Most of the games where old and not played. Now the list of possible things to clean went from 2370 to 1905. This also helps speed up the startup of the program as it won't have to detect them.

Improved detection rules.

Updated the programs title bar buttons to be more like Windows 10/11.

Added new menu icon to the title bar to include a menu for quicker access to other areas in the program.

Added drop down on scan again button to go back to home screen.

Multiple UI changes.

Great, now have a break!

kelper said:

Great, now have a break!

Click to expand...

No time for breaks lol
Right now the program has barely been downloaded, because no one knows about it and for some odd reason only softpedia has put it on its site, all the other download sites wont even respond to my emails, which is odd.
But before the program gets well known this is my chance to polish it as much as I can.
First impressions are so important, so getting it polished now will make for a better first impression to new users.
Otherwise a bad first impression and most will never look at it again, kinda like dating lol

Right now im working on trying to speed up the compact browser databases.
My buddy ran it on his work computer where chrome had 45 profiles, the cache alone was 18gb (200k files) and the scan in the browser compact took 37 min while the compact itself took 30 sec. When the scan was done it found 1200 databases.
This is because during the scan part, is none of the databases in a chrome based browsers have a file extension, where in firefox they all have .sqlite extensions.
So the scan has to read the first 15 chars inside every file that doesnt have an extension to see if it is a sqlite database.
So im working on trying to find a way to speed the scan up.

My birthday is this Friday, I turn 46. Im hoping after a couple of days of you guys testing and nothing to report that needs fixed that I will release v2.7.0 on my birthday.

Let me know what you think of the new version!

Just did a test, I put it in my code to output every file it find under chrome based browsers that dont have an extension, and its a lot!!!
No wonder the scan took 37 min on my buddy's machine, it had to read over 200k files.
Im hoping that there is default names for all the databases, and thankfully the compact browser databases tools will be able to tell me every database, I just need to get my chrome cache high so that all possible databases are made, if there is no random names databases I should be able to speed it up.

I'm running it now. I had just done a repair install of Windows. Scanning Windows.old took a long time. The scan was seventeen minutes and the clean nearly as long.

The database scan saved a few hundred kilobytes but I have only browsers, no database programs.

I throttle my CPU to 50% to extend battery life so I will do another repair install and try again on 'Plugged in' at 100% CPU.

Windows decided to download a few updates and for my next run I will disconnect from the internet

kelper said:

I'm running it now. I had just done a repair install of Windows. Scanning Windows.old took a long time. The scan was seventeen minutes and the clean nearly as long.

The database scan saved a few hundred kilobytes but I have only browsers, no database programs.

I throttle my CPU to 50% to extend battery life so I will do another repair install and try again on 'Plugged in' at 100% CPU.

Windows decided to download a few updates and for my next run I will disconnect from the internet

Click to expand...

All modern browsers store cookies and other data inside of an SQLite database file. So that's why they can be compacted. The old school way was they used to store a file for every single cookie and everything else so you can imagine how drastically better a database so that would be.

As for the scan it took 17 minutes?!?!

On one of my tests I scanned 1.5 million files with a custom clean rule and it took under 2 minutes. Now granted I'm on SSD and Nvme drives, I haven't tested on the old school HDD drives so I have no clue of the speed on those.

What kind of drive are you on?

If you are not on one of the old school drives something really slowed down that scan. I don't know if it was Windows doing stuff in the background and using the drive, or if it was something else.

But I would like to dig into it with you and figure it out.

Let me run it again plugged in with max CPU. It is a recent SSD NVME.

kelper said:

Let me run it again plugged in with max CPU. It is a recent SSD NVME.

Click to expand...

Let me know, because on Nvme there is no way it should ever take that long.
Will be interesting to see if it was lowering the cpu that did it.

@SirShane ,

I download the test version, but my WinZip 25.0 Pro program choked repeatedly trying to open it, and Windows would tell me to close the program because it was not responding.

I did get to open the .zip file to view the files with Windows File Explorer, but I could see no "installer" file. It appears these files should be extracted to the SirCleaner program folder(s) . . . ? Or, is this a standalone portable build?

I don't do a lot of beta testing. I prefer stable software, but I did want to lend a hand, but not bork my current version of SirCleaner Pro.

No rush to reply. My afternoon is booked later. I have a pro bono client waiting for me to burn six 2-DVD sets of his 40th Anniversary celebrations, that I edited and enhanced for him over the last month in my spare time.

Have a great day.

Regards,
Phil

garioch7 said:

@SirShane ,

I download the test version, but my WinZip 25.0 Pro program choked repeatedly trying to open it, and Windows would tell me to close the program because it was not responding.

I did get to open the .zip file to view the files with Windows File Explorer, but I could see no "installer" file. It appears these files should be extracted to the SirCleaner program folder(s) . . . ? Or, is this a standalone portable build?

I don't do a lot of beta testing. I prefer stable software, but I did want to lend a hand, but not bork my current version of SirCleaner Pro.

No rush to reply. My afternoon is booked later. I have a pro bono client waiting for me to burn six 2-DVD sets of his 40th Anniversary celebrations, that I edited and enhanced for him over the last month in my spare time.

Have a great day.

Regards,
Phil

Click to expand...

Should just be able to right click on the zip file, if on Win 11 click more options and choose your zip program (I use 7-zip) and extract it to a subfolder.

Then go to your current SirCleaner folder and copy the settings file and paste it into the new extracted folder, overwriting the one in there. That will have your key and all settings.

Updated the exe, from my tests I sped up the compact browser databases scan by 19x maybe faster.

@SirShane ,

Thank you for your reply.

Right-clicking and selecting WinZip Pro produces the same error. I tested WinZip Pro with another .zip file, and it worked just fine.

The process you describe seems to imply that the result of following your instructions would be that I would have a second copy of SirCleaner Pro on my computer (Tech Version)?

I will await the official update via SirCleaner Pro. I don't want to create problems for myself, by not knowing precisely what I am doing, and why.

Have a great day.

Regards,
Phil

I just tried extracting the 270 zip with 7-zip and Explorer. It extracts fine with both on my machine.

garioch7 said:

@SirShane ,

Thank you for your reply.

Right-clicking and selecting WinZip Pro produces the same error. I tested WinZip Pro with another .zip file, and it worked just fine.

The process you describe seems to imply that the result of following your instructions would be that I would have a second copy of SirCleaner Pro on my computer (Tech Version)?

I will await the official update via SirCleaner Pro. I don't want to create problems for myself, by not knowing precisely what I am doing, and why.

Have a great day.

Regards,
Phil

Click to expand...

I created the zip file with 7-zip. I don't use winzip, havent in years.
I just redid the zip with WinRAR instead. Bigger file now, maybe because I did 7-zip zip at max compression that winzip doesn't like it.

Another option is to download and use 7-zip, its free and my goto.

Redownload the file and see if the new zip works for you.
Make sure to extract it to a new folder.

Yes its like a 2nd copy on the program, portable. Once you extract it you can copy over your settings file from you normal SirCleaner you use and paste it into the new folder.
This is jist for testing, so once done you can delete the new folder with the program as when I put out the update officially your normal SirCleaner will update.

@SirShane ,

Thank you for your reply. You are a patient man, with us cautious old-timers. Sorry for the extra work!

I had the last older version of WinZip Pro, (2020) for which you could purchase a license (no subscription). I suspected that the old version could not read your file, so I reluctantly purchased a subscription for the latest version of WinZip Standard this afternoon, which did read your file just fine. As to be expected, it wiped out my older version.

Thank you for telling me what to do, and assuring me that my SirCleaner Pro version will not be affected by testing your latest beta. I do my weekly updates, backups, and scans on Friday of both of computers, as well as backing up my Samsung S21 to both computers, using Samsung Smart Switch.

I will try to find the time over the next few days to play with your latest test version. I am going to download it now, so I have it available. I have a lot of domestic chores and such scheduled for the weekend, but it will be there if I get to it.

Thank you again. Have a great day.

Regards,
Phil