Advice Request How bad is CCleaner?

[Stopspying]

In many cases what you clean now, will be re-generated in an hour.

Very true.

I stopped using CCleaner when Avast was caught out. I've used Privazer, Wise Care 365, Kerish Doctor and BleachBit at various times since then, sometimes in combination with one of the others. I see lots of recommendations for Kerish Doctor, here and elsewhere but I've not got on with it very well. It gave me no options about where to install it - I don't like software assuming it will install exactly where it chooses, rather than the owner of the device choosing, right after install I was fighting several parts of Kerish Doctors suite that wanted to immediately take control and do their thing, rather than allowing me to go through the options and run what I wanted. Again, I want some control over what runs on my machines, as well as deciding when. I know that I can control much of this, but please Kerish let me explore what you have to offer before jumping up and shouting 'Me,Me,Me'.

Wise Care 365 seems laid back in comparison to Kerish Doctor, it offers a variety of scans and management options, it cleans OK and fast but I suggest you steer clear of the registry cleaning element, as mentioned in an earlier post. BleachBit and Privazer offer what might be called a deeper clean than Wise's through their settings. Both work fine as long as you're careful about what you ask to be cleaned. Personally I'm not totally sold on the idea of letting Microsoft take care of all my cleaning needs, I just don't trust MS from a privacy angle. I can see the sense in letting tools designed by the OS's maker doing this but currently I'm trying to keep an eye on what these tools don't remove that I would rather were cleaned out periodically.

 

[Tiamati]

If you are concerned about privacy, just block Ccleaner access to internet through windows (or your av) firewall. Disable real time monitoring and be happy.

I don't trust AVAST too, but i consider these changes to be enough about any privacy concern...

 

[DJ Panda]

I've been using BleachBit for awhile. Is it an adequate program to use or is there a better one? I might try Storage Sense.

 

[EndangeredPootis]

Very true.

I stopped using CCleaner when Avast was caught out. I've used Privazer, Wise Care 365, Kerish Doctor and BleachBit at various times since then, sometimes in combination with one of the others. I see lots of recommendations for Kerish Doctor, here and elsewhere but I've not got on with it very well. It gave me no options about where to install it - I don't like software assuming it will install exactly where it chooses, rather than the owner of the device choosing, right after install I was fighting several parts of Kerish Doctors suite that wanted to immediately take control and do their thing, rather than allowing me to go through the options and run what I wanted. Again, I want some control over what runs on my machines, as well as deciding when. I know that I can control much of this, but please Kerish let me explore what you have to offer before jumping up and shouting 'Me,Me,Me'.

Wise Care 365 seems laid back in comparison to Kerish Doctor, it offers a variety of scans and management options, it cleans OK and fast but I suggest you steer clear of the registry cleaning element, as mentioned in an earlier post. BleachBit and Privazer offer what might be called a deeper clean than Wise's through their settings. Both work fine as long as you're careful about what you ask to be cleaned. Personally I'm not totally sold on the idea of letting Microsoft take care of all my cleaning needs, I just don't trust MS from a privacy angle. I can see the sense in letting tools designed by the OS's maker doing this but currently I'm trying to keep an eye on what these tools don't remove that I would rather were cleaned out periodically.

When you install kerish doctor you can both choose where to install it and if you want it to go into auto mode or user dependant mode<(aka classic mode)

 

[Stopspying]

If you are concerned about privacy, just block Ccleaner access to internet through windows (or your av) firewall. Disable real time monitoring and be happy.

I don't trust AVAST too, but i consider these changes to be enough about any privacy concern...

Good advice. I was doing that before the exposure of Avast's underhand methods, I'd got fed up with CCleaner updates changing my settings to allow it to 'phone home' and I didn't have their real time monitoring enabled. With hindsight I wonder if Cleaner' was 'phoning home' with more information than I suspected at the time.

 

[Stopspying]

When you install kerish doctor you can both choose where to install it and if you want it to go into auto mode or user dependant mode<(aka classic mode)

I thought those options had been there when I had installed Kerish Doctor previously, but the most recent install (possibly 10 weeks ago) didn't give me those options at all. It was a genuine licensed version.

 

[BVLon]

I've been using BleachBit for awhile. Is it an adequate program to use or is there a better one? I might try Storage Sense.

Put your trust in Storage Sense

 

[S M G]

I was on the fence about ditching ccleaner when it got acquired by avast, and then the trojan fiasco sealed it for me:

CCleaner Compromised to Distribute Malware for Almost a Month

I currently set my browsers to clear cache on exit and use Privazer once a week for deeper clean-up.

 

[Sammo]

I use Privacy Eraser

 

[Tiamati]

I stopped using CCleaner when Avast was caught out. I've used Privazer, Wise Care 365, Kerish Doctor and BleachBit at various times since then, sometimes in combination with one of the others. I see lots of recommendations for Kerish Doctor, here and elsewhere but I've not got on with it very well. It gave me no options about where to install it - I don't like software assuming it will install exactly where it chooses, rather than the owner of the device choosing, right after install I was fighting several parts of Kerish Doctors suite that wanted to immediately take control and do their thing, rather than allowing me to go through the options and run what I wanted. Again, I want some control over what runs on my machines, as well as deciding when. I know that I can control much of this, but please Kerish let me explore what you have to offer before jumping up and shouting 'Me,Me,Me'.

For me, the problem with Kerish Doctor is the huge amount of options. I just want something easy, light and effective. Kerish starts to mess up with Windows settings, registry, and who knows what else, and in a few days, if something crash, you'll never know if Kerish was the responsible. So i pass.

I've been using Ccleaner, despite AVAST, for it's simplicity. It's easy to manage options, cookie exceptions and it does not keep asking me to clean registry files. But as i said, i block Cclaner with firewall and update it through Patch My PC. It keeps it updated and i don't have to care about Ccleaner calling home.

I've tested a lot of cleaners recently (ashampoo, iobit, glasysoft and others) and the only one i would use beside ccleaner is wise cleaner (but never Wise Care 365). That said, i never tested Privacy Eraser, BleachBit or Privazer

 

[jackuars]

My advice to people who gets advised by the "Geeks" that registry cleaners are unncessary or does not make a difference is to take that with a grain of salt. Apparently a lot of articles seem to suggest that registry cleaners are unnecessary without conducting proper tests on a variety of different systems under different situations, and the "Geeks" take those suggestions as their bible. The debatable question is if it could mess up your system, depends on which registry cleaner you are using, and what options do you select during registry cleaning. So this is something that the users need to understand before doing a "cleaning" procedure.

A simple unbiased article that's worth a look at it: Do we really need Windows registry cleaners, based on actual tests by a reputed Gizmo's Freeware editor.

 

[roger_m]

For me, the problem with Kerish Doctor is the huge amount of options. I just want something easy, light and effective. Kerish starts to mess up with Windows settings, registry, and who knows what else, and in a few days, if something crash, you'll never know if Kerish was the responsible. So i pass.

Kerish Doctor is safe to use. I've been using it on and off since it was first released. It won't delete any needed files or registry keys. I've used on many different computers over the years and have only ever seen a single false positive from the registry cleaner.

You can configure it to only be run manually, rather that running in the background.

My advice to people who gets advised by the "Geeks" that registry cleaners are unncessary or does not make a difference is to take that with a grain of salt.

I've been using registry cleaners for years and have used pretty much every registry cleaner ever made. I've probably used registry cleaners thousands of times and have only seen a noticeable increase in performance twice.

Once, I deleted ten thousand registry errors with multiple registry cleaners, on one of my computers, followed by a registry defrag and afterwards I noticed zero difference in performance. I had so many registry errors, as beforehand, I deleted a number of program folders, rather than uninstalling the programs.

When working on customers computers, if the computer is running slower than it should and I can't find the cause, I will use a registry cleaner and never, not even a single time, has the computer run any better afterwards.

So while a registry cleaner can make a computer run faster, I would say that more 99.9% of the time, it won't. It is also very rare, for a registry cleaner to fix any issues. So in general, I would say registry cleaners are unnecessary.

The debatable question is if it could mess up your system, depends on which registry cleaner you are using, and what options do you select during registry cleaning. So this is something that the users need to understand before doing a "cleaning" procedure.

More than 99% of registry cleaners, including CCleaner will at least sometimes have issues with false positives, causing them to delete valid registry keys. There are literally only a few registry cleaners that are safe to use. Even the majority of registry cleaners that are recommended as being safe to use, are unsafe, with CCleaner being a good example of this.[/QUOTE]

 

[blacksheep]

Thanks everyone for the replies. I think I will switch to storage sense and have CCleaner as a backup option, just in case.

 

[blacksheep]

These are just bells and whistles put on paper. As soon as something grabs your attention via social engineering, you, totally by yourself, will give it the admin privilege. I don’t like security or insecurity that’s just drafted on paper and totally irrelevant on practice. Attackers are using much more clever methods than Disk Cleanup privilege escalation. Also, most behavioural blockers already have a policy that tackles that. The cleanmgr has got nothing to do with Storage Sense either. I think people should stop wasting time closing vulnerabilities that either no one has ever exploited in-the-wild, or have already long been forgotten, and focus on realistic security issues of today.

It's been stuck now for over 30 minutes

 

[TairikuOkami]

It's been stuck now for over 30 minutes

Yeah, that happens sometimes. MS is unable to fix that issue, well since forever. I guess it is unable to stop some service, so it is a never ending loop.

 

[BVLon]

It's been stuck now for over 30 minutes

View attachment 234869

You can try and delete this manually. The update files are located in C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution\Download

To make sure that Windows Update is cleaned up successfully, turn off delivery optimisation which might be casting these files to other PCs.

 

[Ink]

There are better Free and, or Open-Source alternatives to CCleaner that clean more junk and have better overall reputation.

I recommend only few programs for any kind of Windows PC maintenance:
1) Wise Care 365
3) Windows itself

@blacksheep
If you do not want to the full program, you can download Wise Disk Cleaner standalone or the portable.
http://www.wisecleaner.com/wise-disk-cleaner.html

@XLR8R It has a name.
Windows Disk Cleaner and Storage Sense (Windows 10).

Other mentions:
https://privazer.com/en/
https://www.bleachbit.org/

Read documentation before using!
https://eraser.heidi.ie/
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/sdelete

 

[Antus67]

Currently I'm using Glary Utilities Pro paid version they also have a free version it does the job for me and performs fluently

Glary Utilities | Glarysoft

The Official Website of Glary Utilities. The #1 free, powerful and all-in-one utility in the world market!

www.glarysoft.com

 

[plat]

PrivaZer, like just about every other cleaner, does remove available registry entries. I've found it to be rather conservative and "timid" when it comes to general clean-up, which is fine as you don't want your general system to be affected. It does an adequate job. It cleans up Update junk but does invoke the Disk Cleanup prog.

It's a work in progress!

Great idea to have Storage Sense plus a secondary 3rd party cleaner. It's all good...well mostly.

 

[morgning]

I used to have CCleaner before, then switched to Wise Care 365, I liked it more