Family problem! How to remove XP's "cleanmgr.exe"

[leoblob]

Turns out, my son has been visiting bad places on the Internet. He used cleanmgr.exe to cover his tracks, but I still figured out that he was going bad places. Now, I'm trying to remove cleanmgr.exe completely. I delete it, but each time I go to use it, it reappears. I've even deleted the files in the i386 cache and other locations... anything like cleanmgr.ex_ and so on, but it still reappears. Any help very much appreciated. (again, it's XP home)

By the way, his computer will now be placed in the busiest room of the house.

[dsigma6]

i'm not familiar with cleanmgr.exe, but have you run hijackthis?

[leoblob]

(I don't know anything about XP but...) cleanmgr.exe appears to be the program that Windows launches when you select "clean up disk" under the hard drive properties. So, it seems that it's a basic component of XP itself... ?? It deletes cookies, some temp files, etc.

I'm not familiar with hijackthis...??

[K0LO]

cleanmgr.exe is the Windows Disk Cleanup Tool. It's one of the files that Windows XP protects, so if it's deleted it will replace itself with a new copy. This is done with the Windows File Protection Service.

There are some articles that explain how to disable the Windows File Protection Service, but you definitely do not want to do that or else you risk having a rogue program corrupt your Windows XP installation some day if it attempts to overwrite a system file. The protected files are at C:\Windows\System32\dllcache, but to see them you have to display hidden files and folders and also display protected operating system files.

Cleanmgr.exe is in there. I don't know what will happen if you remove it. Probably there is also a list of files that belong in the cache so I wouldn't be surprised if Windows is able to tell that it's missing and put it back.

If you hack the machine to disable cleanmgr.exe, I'll bet that your son could figure out some other way to cover his tracks. So in all honesty, your last sentence describes a better solution.

[dsigma6]

search for hijackthis on
http://www.download.com. it may not be relevant in this instance, but it is helpful in finding bad stuff on the computer. after it creates a log file, paste it in over at
http://www.hijackthis.de and it will let you know what other users have found for each registry entry it finds. wow that was formatted sloppily..

[leoblob]

@dsigma6, thanks for the link, I will definitely check it out.

@k0lo, you are exactly right. When I delete all the files that seem relevant, Windows just replicates all of them again. I won't mess with the File Protection Service. Fortunately, while my son is into computer games, he really doesn't know much about computers. I'm sure one of his buddies give him this tip. Still, I managed to figure out what he was doing, and I did find stuff cleanmgr.exe missed... so I'm still able to keep abreast of his computer-literate friends

Having the computer in a busy, heavily-trafficked room will help. Also, we will be sharing a high-speed internet connection soon, and I am hopeful I can set up the router to keep track of what's going on at his port.

I'm very disappointed that he did this, but I guess that just makes him a normal kid...

[ronbo613]

I'm very disappointed that he did this, but I guess that just makes him a normal kid...

I wouldn't be to hard on him, the internet has a lot of temptations for a young person. A number of my friends have asked me about the same things regarding their kids. Part of growing up in the modern age of man.
HijackThis is a good program that will tell you if you have something fishy going on with your computer. Be careful with it though. If you delete something with it, it's gone for good. Make sure you have a good antivirus program and firewall that is updated regularly. Use Firefox, it will save you a lot of headaches.
There is software that will monitor your computer usage and you can password everything, but the best thing to do is only allow your kid to use the computer when someone is around. If he plays ball, you can flow him a little more privacy, rewards for good conduct.

[Deckard]

Hello,

disabling cleanmgr won't help you to solve your problem. As far as I've understood, you don't want the kids have access to certain sites.

You can set up a new user from the "User Accounts" in the Control Panel just for the kids. Make it a Limited Account. If you have Windows Professional, there are more ways to restrict user rights by using the "Local Security Policy" tools, such as browser behavior and other access related stuff.

As mentioned above, there are also other parental monitoring software that are programmed solely for parental monitoring purposes. They are surely a lot easier to use and more intuitive than fiddling around Windows' built-in tools.

It's not been mentioned in your post what kind of a browser you are using, but I strongly recommend you to deploy Firefox as internet browser. I have been using it since the early days and I can attest that it's far less vulnerable than Internet Explorer regarding ActiveX and other harmful bugs that can be triggered on websites before the user can do anything stop them. This is more of a precaution for the computer than kids accessing unappropriate sites.

Good luck.

[xcoll2001]

I agree with Deckard. Cleanmgr.exe isn't the source of your problem. In fact deleting it would be a bad idea. I don't even know how you got the idea that it was cleanmgr.exe. I even doubt your son uses it to cover his tracks. There are so many easy ways to that, eg, deleting the history and file cache can be done within the browser itself without the use of external programs. Deckard's advise of creating a new user account for your son without administrative rights is the best solution.

[christopher_wolf]

Account without admin rights? I hate to say this, but that isn't going to limit certain online activities unless you take the trouble in setting a few options *beforehand*.

In addition, there are some, well, holes that could be utilized if the user actually has access to the hardware and/or another computer on the network that has the ability to log in remotely to the computer in question with an account that has admin privledges.

[leoblob]

The way I got the idea that it's cleanmgr.exe is that's what program is used by XP when you select 'clean up hard drive' (or whatever it's called). Also, it appeared in the list of Recently Used Programs, and the Properties for the program name in that list was "cleanmgr.exe," so that's what he used.

I appreciate everyone's suggestions and advice. My son and I had a long talk, and we've worked out a solution between us that doesn't involve computer security/tracking/blocking stuff. It inlcudes things like physically moving the computer, helping him find more interesting stuff to do with his spare time... etc.... there's so many ugly temptations on the Internet... sometimes it's hard to resist (even when you want to)... he's a good kid... this is a kind of problem that many "grown-ups" face, too.

[xcoll2001]

well, isn't that the whole point? you create another account without admin rights so that you can set a few options "beforehand". And as for remote logging, any smart administrator would secure it's privileges by, voila, providing user accounts.

for home uses, creating user accounts will suffice. There isn't any need to create more paranoia for leoblob.

regards

[christopher_wolf]

It pays to think of stuff *ahead* of time; this isn't just content filtering either nor does it have to be overly draconian.

Leo found the best way in talking with his son; otherwise, it would have been comparatively more difficult to setup the account with a decent level of control as opposed to a sit-down talk.

[gearguy]

Turns out, my son has been visiting bad places on the Internet. He used cleanmgr.exe to cover his tracks, but I still figured out that he was going bad places. Now, I'm trying to remove cleanmgr.exe completely. I delete it, but each time I go to use it, it reappears. I've even deleted the files in the i386 cache and other locations... anything like cleanmgr.ex_ and so on, but it still reappears. Any help very much appreciated. (again, it's XP home)

By the way, his computer will now be placed in the busiest room of the house.

Hahahahahahahaha

Is he looking at girls?
Just think, it could be a lot lot worse.

[christopher_wolf]

Hahahahahahahaha

Is he looking at girls?
Just think, it could be a lot lot worse.

Subtle, very subtle.

Hey, that's just normal right? As far as the internet goes, actually, that is pretty squeaky clean given what else he could have been looking at.