Title: plugins leftover marked “unknown”
Last modified: July 7, 2020

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# plugins leftover marked “unknown”

 *  anonymized-14293447
 * (@anonymized-14293447)
 * [9 years, 12 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/plugins-leftover-marked-unknown/)
 * Unfortunately I have to give it one star. The idea behind this plugin is is ingenious
   because, if compared to other “database-optimize-clean” plugins where you actually
   start the process of cleaning blindly, this is the only one that allows you to
   check the original source of the orphaned tables. But does it? In my case the
   source was detected as “unknown”, therefore it spoiled the possibility to clean
   only what I needed to clean.
 * UPDATE: Almost 4 years later I’m testing this plugin again. The problem I mentioned
   is still there, but I’ll raise some stars because I think it’s fair enough to
   say that it does scan the database without errors.
    -  This topic was modified 6 years, 1 month ago by anonymized-14293447.

Viewing 5 replies - 1 through 5 (of 5 total)

 *  [LogoLogics](https://wordpress.org/support/users/logologics/)
 * (@logologics)
 * [9 years, 7 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/plugins-leftover-marked-unknown/#post-8681989)
 * I agree at some point, however I worked around it by having a solid backup. I
   did delete some tables that should not be deleted in the ‘unknown” section, but
   was able to restore in minutes with my back up.
 * If you clean not all at once, you can find out which “unknowns” you should not
   delete and which one you should delete in my case.
 *  Thread Starter anonymized-14293447
 * (@anonymized-14293447)
 * [9 years, 7 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/plugins-leftover-marked-unknown/#post-8682006)
 * yes, but your approach is kind of trial-and-errors, which is not so smart when
   dealing with databases. Moreover, you must agree with me that issues related 
   to wrongly deleted tables might not rise immediately… it might take weeks before
   you discover them, or they might come out only as you update anything. So I believe
   this work around doesn’t save GarbageCollector. 🙂
 *  [LogoLogics](https://wordpress.org/support/users/logologics/)
 * (@logologics)
 * [9 years, 7 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/plugins-leftover-marked-unknown/#post-8682114)
 * Correct it is trial and error. Must say, I now cleaned up several sites, just
   one large one had this issue and was solved with a back up. If later things would
   come up, I always have backups to restore as well.
 * After these clean ups my sites ( and even the admin dashboard ) are much faster
   to load.
    Having a solution without any risc would be great, but have not found
   one yet unfortunattely. Did you find another one?
 *  Thread Starter anonymized-14293447
 * (@anonymized-14293447)
 * [9 years, 7 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/plugins-leftover-marked-unknown/#post-8682137)
 * I haven’t found a solution. It’s really surprising to me that the WP community
   hasn’t addressed this “left-over” problem and that nobody is building a proper
   plugin to solve it. I believe there should be a sort of mandatory check that 
   any plugin should have a proper uninstall system, since I’m learning that very
   few has.
    No uninstall? No approval from WP!
 *  [LogoLogics](https://wordpress.org/support/users/logologics/)
 * (@logologics)
 * [9 years, 7 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/plugins-leftover-marked-unknown/#post-8682688)
 * Yep, ofcourse there are a lot of free plugins that work just fine, but do not
   have a complet de-install option. It would be great if all of them had it.
 * Ofcourse we can do a lot to prevent clutter from piling up, by only trying out
   new plugins in a staging site and not in a live site. That way we only keep the
   ones we really like and need and it leaves no clutter of all the trials we deinstalled.
 * Lets hope this becomes a criteria to get approved!
    -  This reply was modified 9 years, 7 months ago by [LogoLogics](https://wordpress.org/support/users/logologics/).

Viewing 5 replies - 1 through 5 (of 5 total)

The topic ‘plugins leftover marked “unknown”’ is closed to new replies.

 * ![](https://ps.w.org/plugins-garbage-collector/assets/icon-256x256.png?rev=2327424)
 * [Plugins Garbage Collector (Database Cleanup)](https://wordpress.org/plugins/plugins-garbage-collector/)
 * [Frequently Asked Questions](https://wordpress.org/plugins/plugins-garbage-collector/#faq)
 * [Support Threads](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/plugins-garbage-collector/)
 * [Active Topics](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/plugins-garbage-collector/active/)
 * [Unresolved Topics](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/plugins-garbage-collector/unresolved/)
 * [Reviews](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/plugins-garbage-collector/reviews/)

 * 5 replies
 * 2 participants
 * Last reply from: [LogoLogics](https://wordpress.org/support/users/logologics/)
 * Last activity: [9 years, 7 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/plugins-leftover-marked-unknown/#post-8682688)