Hi, 
same thing here, i suspect AdvancedSystemCare, i dont have ccleaner. I tried your savegame (thank you for that)  but it doesn't seem to work. I just have to copy the file in the /documents and settings/user/..../machinarium.exe/ directory right? Have you tried it and it worked? 
I even tried to recover any machinarium.sol deleted file, found it, copied it but nothing? 
I am using XP. any ideas?
You are sure your slider is set to 100KB or more as described 
here?
Check in the file path if there's not another "machinarium.exe" folder.