[Ifeffit] Problem with running Demeter

[Matt Newville]

On Thu, May 2, 2013 at 2:00 AM, Alexander Riskin
<alexander.riskin at uhasselt.be> wrote:
> Dear Amativa,
>
> Bruce is right, Ccleaner messed up your system and, unfortunately, beyond
> repair. Ccleaner promises indeed to remove unused DLL's from your system but
> is very bad at guessing which DLL's are really obsolete and has a tendency
> to assume DLL's are unused instead of playing it safe. Therefore, this piece
> of software needs to be handled by an expert hand, or you butcher your
> system as you seem to have done. I know this because I made the exact same
> mistake 16 years ago after which my windows 98 didn't even boot up anymore,
> so I'm even surprised your pc is still running.
>
> The solution to this problem? Complete reinstallation of your OS, trying to
> manually repair is very complicated and time consuming. You will probably
> run into similar problems with other applications as well because of missing
> DLL's.
>
> regards,
> Alexander
>
> --
> dr. ir. Alexander Riskin
> Doctor-Navorser
> IMO - Inorganic and Physical Chemistry
>
> T +32(0)11 26 83 94 | F +32(0)11 26 83 23
>
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>
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Perhaps you're right, but this sounds a bit pessimistic to me.
Surely, this program doesn't always mess up every computer to the
point that the OS needs to be reinstalled.   It's not clear to me that
it removes DLLs it deems are "not needed", or that this is what
happened here.  I've not used this particular tool, but it looks to me
like it removes truly unneeded files (browser caches, temp folders)
and the cleans the registry.   If I had to, I'd guess the problem is
in the registry, not in deleted files.   The  cleaner may have left a
registry backup, or a system restore tool might help.   But if the
system is working fine and only Demeter is not, I doubt the OS needs
to be reinstalled.

--Matt