As some of the Kitizens may recall, TD has had a problem over a long period of time with regard to his PC not shutting down when requested.
It would get to the "Windows is shutting down" stage and then wouldn't.
This problem was seemingly erratic, and did not always occur........but did so more often than not.
Over the months, TD has done malware scans, registry cleans, uninstalling programs, drivers etc and reinstalling same, checking all hardware, unplugging usb devices, putting them back in etc etc etc.
On occasions the problem seemed to be cured and then it would reassert itself.
TD was going to throw PC in skip, buy new PC, built new PC, throw himself over bridge, go into a monastery...
But........at last, the misbehaving program has been identified..........and it is the very program than was being used ( in part ) in the efforts to cure things...
I talk of ccleaner.
This is normally a very well behaved program, and very effective, but there was obviously some sort of corruption in there and every time TD invoked it to do a clean up...the PC would not shut down.
I feel a fool having taken so long to realise what was wrong.
However to the curious incident of the reappearing preferences.
TD unnstalled ccleaner, then did a search for any orphaned files under both ccleaner and it's author, Piriform. Found a few and sent them to the ether........did a registry search for the same names...........found the relevant keys and consigned them to history.
Rebooted and did these searches for the second time.........nothing found. Good.
Downloaded and installed a fresh ccleaner.
The installation went fine........except..........when I opened the program, there were my own preferences already in place, and my preferences are not the default ones.
Having cleaned out all ( I thought ) references to the old install, how could a new, fresh install remember my preferences ?
Also, having opened that new install.........the old problem reoccured....
So, out it went again and the above clean up repeated.
Ccleaner is now no longer on the machine and the machine is shutting down perfectly..............but how could my previous preferences be remembered after all traces of the program had been removed.
Now to the question..........at last, I hear you all cry.
Last night, in pondering this problem and having a wee look round I came upon a cookie from the Piriform site.
Could a cookie retain such data as preferences.............have binned said cookie but am reluctant to reinstall ccleaner in case problem arises again.
Any advice gratefully received....