It's nice that someone got back to you on this...

Sorry for the delay, it’s been brought to our attention when the community forum was switched to the new platform we stopped receiving notifications on new posts, this is being addressed.

The following is the answer from the DEV team and probably won’t answer your question but we raised a request to include a log or list of delete files\app for future enhancement. I did however tested this by placing a few excel files in c:\windows\temp and it did not delete those.

“Dev Response”

• Software Remediation: ‘Clean Files’ feature uses industry best practices to scan and remove unwanted files from the machine.
• These are primarily system/application generated junk/cache type of files that has little or no use and takes up disk space on the user machine.
• ‘Clean files’ removes junk files from multiple locations and does a more through cleanup than the built-in windows disk cleaner.
• Typical example of additional locations are: - %temp% - C:\windows\temp.”

Thanks, Joe.  I figured this just went into a black hole.  There's a balance between keeping things simple for the average end user and providing details to advanced users who would like the info and control.  In this case it's too simple I'm afraid.  It's the same with Tune Performance and Optimize Network.  It would be nice to get a report of what changes they actually make.

It's great that Dell provides these utilities, don't get me wrong.  It's a great differentiator for you guys.  Detailed logs are definitely needed though.

Regards,

Dan

"‘Clean Files’ feature uses industry best practices to scan and remove unwanted files from the machine."

How can I know what files I don't want?  I could open Windows Explorer, right-click a file, and select "Delete", but that's not industry best practices and I'm not qualified to choose which files I don't want.  I just wonder how to become informed which ones I don't want.

I have 4TB of disk drives, so 'Clean Files' was still in the middle of its scan when I figured out what it had in mind.  There's a "Cancel" button which is grayed out and unclickable.  However, I could close the SupportAssist application and I think it stopped.

I opened SupportAssist again, went to Settings, and disabled scheduled scans.  Actually I wouldn't mind having scheduled scans for other stuff like checking hardware health, I just want to disable 'Clean Files' until I learn what files I don't want, but there doesn't seem to be an option to just disable 'Clean Files'.

I have a related question to this...

You cite " industry best practices" and yet when it runs there is no setting to select the standard of deletion. My company usually uses Gutman as a standard for file deletion and I do not want any app deleting anything from our PC's insecurely. So my question is: What standard of deletion is used?

Incidentally, an option to turn that particular aspect of the assistant off would be most welcome if the standard of deletion is insecure. 

Hi Up ToMischief,

In case your system is part of any AD domain means if this laptop belongs your company then you are using wrong Dell SupportAssist application.

Application which you are using that is only meant for personal computers we have Dell SupportAssist application for Business users and that is totally different what you are using because SA Business application is all controlled by corporate IT Admin.

Thanks

DELL-Nikhil K

If I'm not a business, is it possible for me to download Dell SupportAssist for Business anyway, instead of Dell SupportAssist for Home?  Will Dell SupportAssist for Business let me set options like not doing CleanFiles but doing the rest of the scans that it can do periodically?

[Off-topic:  Gutmann designed his method for users who didn't know details of their magnetic drives, so that no matter which recording method was used there would be some subset of the passes that would take care of the drive.  For modern magnetic drives Schneier's method is probably better and it just takes 7 passes.  But if the drive is an SSD instead of magnetic, wear levelling will defeat any kind of shredder unless you shred the entire drive.  On an SSD if you delete a single file the best you can do is let a sufficiently modern version of Windows use the Trim command, so the SSD's firmware will zero the internal cells that were actually in use.]

Hi Norman Diamond,

SupportAssist Business version is only meant for business users only because that has to managed through company IT admin.

You can continue using consumer version and for notification you can control it through 'Settings' top right corner you have setting icon.

Thanks

DELL-Nikhil k

Hello Nikhil,

No, I am not using the wrong version. Dell's own blurb says that the business version is for companies that have a formal IT team and being a small company we do not. The standard version is what Dell recommends  for those like us.

So my question stands: What standard of deletion is being used?

Hi Joe,

I have Dell Support Assist Client 3.0.1.62 running on a Dell Latitude 5480 and I just ran it today for the first time and just like the original poster of this thread I was a bit surprised that the "clean files" section deleted a total of 55 GB of "System" files, but I can't seem to find any logs as to what did it delete that was worth 55 GB. Since your post back on July 13, 2018 would you happen to know if the developers have updated this application to include any sort of detailed information as to what exactly this application is deleting? I've been looking to see if there's something on this version that kept the log of exactly what it deleted, but I have not been able to find any sort of log. I'm just left wondering as to what exactly it found that it was 55 GB worth of "System" files that it deleted.

Thank you,
Carlos