I’m stuck. I just went through a power clean, using Safe Delete, and now I am at the end. It gives me two choices: press Finalize or Restore Files – AFTER I have checked to see if my data and/or system have suffered any damage. Well, how do I check for damage? I don’t want to Restore Files because I want them clean. I don’t want to press Finalize (it says it is permanent) in case there is damage.
What do I do? 
Hi Janja and welcome
The idea is to keep the window in the background, while launching the programs you know are affected by cleaning and make sure they work as expected. That’s pretty much what you can do - try the operations you normally do, and if everything’s fine, you can press FINALIZE. If you still find problems later, it’s good to have a backup.
Hello,
Exactly like Leoni says. You have to check yourself for the damage. CSC couldn’t do this as it cannot just start all affected application to see if they work. For each application “to function normally” means a different thing.
Thank you very much. Keeping the window in the background while I launched programs is what I needed to know. I didn’t know you could do that! I am a very obedient person ;), and there that window was, giving me two choices, I thought: click on Restore or Finalize. I didn’t know there was a third choice, which is: Keep window in the background while testing programs! 
There’s more to my story, though. I went to bed last night leaving the computer on with the Restore or Finalize window up so I could take action once I heard from you-all, but when I got up this morning, I was half-asleep, so by mistake I did as I always do and pressed the button to turn on my computer–of course it turned OFF my computer, since it was already on. Oh no! I pressed the on button again, and this came up: “One of the files containing the system’s Registry data had to be recovered by use of a log or alternate copy. The recovery was successful.”
Uh oh. So I restarted the computer and thank goodness it seemed okay this time. I have no idea if all those bad files CSC found were deleted, though, probably not.
Another issue: I didn’t “make a backup” before running CSC, I thought that Safe Delete would take care of that. So if I run it again, I guess I should learn how to “make a backup” in addition to using Safe Delete?
To go back to this morning’s story: when the computer was successfully rebooted, a message came up about the Sys Configu Utility, saying that changes had been made, and do I want to start it in Selective Startup? Normal Startup? and so on. I just pressed okay for everything, but then it gave me an Access Denied error, and said to log in using Admin account. I didn’t even know I had an Admin account.
I use Windows XP, Home Edition, Version 2002, Service Pack 3.
Thank you for any help you can give me. I know I’m a confused neophyte, but I am eager to learn.
Hello,
That’s a protection in case of power failures or… “by mistake restart my computer”:). If something goes wrong before you choose Finalize or Restore(in case SAFE DELETE or REGISTRY PROTECTION is activated) CSC knows and will restore everything as it was before you run the last clean. So, yes, everything is ok in your case and No, the computer was not cleaned. You can start again.
You should have CRC make a backup (which can be restored through CRC)! DO NOT check the “Scan for unsafe entries to delete” box (this is for experts only) under the Settings heading. For a sample of how I have mine set up, see this thread.
Thank you so VERY much. I will get to work on it as soon as I can. Now I have the info, thanks to you guys.