Be Careful with NirSoft CleanAfterMe

[HoppaLong]

I may have posted on a couple of forums about my keyboard suddenly vanishing from Device Manager.
Someone suggested that it might be defective, but it worked fine when plugged into other computers.

Because I like almost everything created by NirSoft, it never crossed my mind that a NirSoft app was
the cause of my keyboard trouble.

I ran CleanAfterMe side-by-side with Device Manager.  The moment I selected the "Yes" button for
"Do you want to clean the selected items?" my keyboard vanished from Device Manager.

Unfortunately, I failed to read the version history!!

The author writes:

"Made another change in cleaning the 'installed USB devices', and Hopefully, this change will fix the
problem of disconnecting the USB mouse/keyboard in some computers."

Can someone explain why anything related to "Installed USB Devices" needs to be cleaned?  I've never
seen this option in any other Windows Cleaner, unless the name changes with different apps.

[jaclaz]

7 hours ago, HoppaLong said:

Can someone explain why anything related to "Installed USB Devices" needs to be cleaned?  I've never
seen this option in any other Windows Cleaner, unless the name changes with different apps.

It happens very often that the USB related Registry keys get cluttered (mainly the USBSTOR related ones) because people inserts a zillion (or two) different USB mass storage devices, so sometimes it is necessary to clean the registry (typical probelms are extremely slow detection and mounting/assigning of drive letters to newly connected devices, devices that don't get a drive letter, etc.), see:

guess WHO exactly had this issue in the latest link? 

jaclaz

 

[HoppaLong]

OK.  I'll reply to both topics.

After several days of system crashes when I inserted a USB stick, I finally noticed the XP AutoPlay
feature was going nuts!  I opened Sysinternals Autoruns and removed the tick from this item:

ShellHWDetection -- Provides notifications for AutoPlay hardware events.

I also disabled AutoPlay in the Group Policy Editor.  That was it!  I could fill my desktop hub with
flash drives and the system remained quiescent.  The problem was gone forever.

jaclaz, I downloaded and installed CleanAfterMe a few weeks ago.  I also have MRU-Blaster, CCleaner,
and CyberScrub Privacy Suite.

When I don't have a problem at home or my business I forget about this monster collection of
documents I've got all related to "system problems and their solutions."  You're right, of course.
USB Registy Keys can become bloated over time.  I just didn't remember.

NirSoft's great scripting program NirCmd, may be the most useful app I've ever downloaded!  That's
why I usually trust everything from NirSoft.

Well, I could always run CleanAfterMe with a tick next to "Installed USB Devices" before rebooting or
shutting down.  No harm is done and the keyboard is always restored to Device Manager.  I just wish
I had read that darn version history before installing the app.

[jaclaz]

Only to (hopefully) clear the "theoretical" approach, CleanAfterMe is more a "privacy" tool than a "System" tool for USB, it's main intended scope is to remove traces of several activities on a PC.

The USBdeview tool is more suited to selectively remove unused devices:

http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/usb_devices_view.html

jaclaz