Wisewiz

@Trojan132Weeeell, to start with, you've got to remember that HomeScreen and WelcomeScreen are very different animals. The former determines whether you start in Health Check or Custom Clean; the latter, whether you see the "Welcome Back, Jerk!" screen when you launch CCleaner. But maybe more importantly, if you're going to recommend batch-file writing to other users, many of whom will not be familiar with batch files at all, you have to be very careful to avoid typos. Scritp and homscreen won't work. And finally, if you're going to mention a drive in a batch file, you need to know that the reader actually HAS such a drive. I'll bet that most of the readers of this thread have no F:\ drive at all. But thanks for your participation in this thread. And welcome to the forum!

@Crni: As AnaRon points out above, resetting the value DWord to 0 or 3 so far has nor succeeded; CCleaner restores its own number (1) after a while. The blocking may work, though. The jury is still out on that one until we see whether CC catches on and subverts that somehow.

It just hit me that I'm not sure what "file" you renamed. Did you change (Cfg)WelcomeScreen to something else, like maybe "(Cfg)WelcomeAnnoyance"?

@AnaRonThanks for reporting that novel attempt. Good luck. May the pest never resurface. @redwolfe_98: I found the instructions for turning Firefox's default DoH setting OFF. So now I'll check on it every once in a while, to make sure the OFF stays OFF. My experience with my CCleaner installs has made me wary of programs resetting themselves in ways I don't like. Good luck to me.

@redwolfe_98 I use the Google public DNS only. My reading of the Internet info on Firefox is that FF bypasses the hosts file whether you're on a secure DNS or not, while my Chrome browser uses the hosts file. Thanks for your suggestions and your interest in this thread, though.

@redwolfe_98 Thanks for the reminder. I don't. My DNS server is public and fast, but not anything like "secure."

Now that is the 64-dollar question! If you ever discover the answer, please share it here.

I've blocked all three in my hosts file, and will watch to see whether CC cries "foul" in one way or another. My browser is Chrome, not FF. FF evidently ignores the hosts file, so maybe, by extension, TB does, too. I'm not sure how that works. My hosts now: # Copyright (c) 1993-2009 Microsoft Corp. 0.0.0.0 ncc.avast.com 0.0.0.0 ncc.avast.com.edgesuite.net 0.0.0.0 ipm-provider.ff.avast.com 0.0.0.0 shepherd.ff.avast.com 0.0.0.0 ip-info.ff.avast.com 0.0.0.0 analytics.ff.avast.com 0.0.0.0 a23-220-246-23.deploy.static.akamaitechnologies.com 0.0.0.0 a23-220-246-59.deploy.static.akamaitechnologies.com 0.0.0.0 28.176.160.34.bc.googleusercontent.com All because of CCleaner's behavior. Maybe superfluous, I dunno.

@Crni Re: your list of three servers above: I wonder whether it will work if I block all of those in hosts.

Unless, of course, you enter your license key. Then Portable morphs into Professional, and it's baaaaack!

@Tumasek: Thank you for that brave suggestion. Please let us know if the 3 changes to 1 at any time soon, will you? Meanwhile, I f my registry gets populated again, I'll try the 3.

No problem. First shot is HKLM; second is HKCU. I'm guessing that what has been successful so far for me is this: I uninstalled/deleted CC completely, removing all bits of it from the AppData folder as well as the program folder; deleted the HKCU and HKLM Piriform keys completely. Installed (well, you know ...) the Portable CC on my D:\ drive with my other portables, and most importantly, did not enter my license key. I still have all of the features I use, and the registry has only populated with the entries you see for the past couple of weeks at least. Piriform is in both hives, and CCleaner is a subkey for each Piriform, but what you see is what I've got.

@Crni: It's no bug. See the above posts from @nukecad. The developers intend that the Welcome screen be seen, eventually by (almost?) everybody. Re: the registry. I have three licenses, but I always use the Portable, because it offers everything I need, and it promises not to use the registry for its settings. Any way, long story short, I got fed up with CC taking 10-15 seconds to open after my click. That only happened in the versions (old and new) when I entered my license key. Never happened in installed-Free or in not-"installed"-portable, unless I entered my key. I, too, wiped the registry, where HKLM Piriform>CCleaner was the offending 40-entry monster, put back a new CC Portable, did not enter my key (even though the ghost of it shows in Options>License Key), and this time, my registry shows only four lines (always ignoring Default:value not set) in HKLM and only two in HKCU. And I have yet to see that da**ed screen on either of my daily active machines. Maybe only licensed-registered copies are getting the screen? Note that if you enter your key into either the Portable or the Free version, you'll get Professional at the top of your window, and the Welcome pest can return.

Gotcha. Wasn't thinking carefully. Thanks for the correction.

@Bastet, Hi! I think OP should consider an in-place upgrade re-install, with all of her settings and programs saved, so no re-installs will be necessary. The system files and the drivers will revert to the standard ones MS used in the install. https://www.elevenforum.com/t/repair-install-windows-11-with-an-in-place-upgrade.418/

I'm not going to start a new thread on this, because it's not a Bug, and I don't need Help with it, but this registry thing is really interesting. In HKLM, where there were about 40-50 lines (IIRC), I'm down to 4 (FOUR!). None of the old Cfg stuff is there. If this is a change with the latest update, I welcome it. (Until/unless the Welcome screen comes back and there's no registry setting to change from 1 to 0.)

Thanks for the heads-up. Of course, if it comes to either or both of my daily-use PCs, it will smack me right in the face (ouch!), so the heads-up will be somewhat redundant. I really appreciate your continuing participation in this discussion, and your sharing of your viewpoint earlier today. And @hazelnut, I'm glad that a member of the "power group" agrees with my stand on this. I'm going to launch a complaint with Support if the danged thing comes back up on my machines. First, I guess, I'll try the registry fix. Speaking of which, I noticed this morning that the number of lines in the CCleaner keys in my registry for both HKCU and HKLM is greatly reduced. Hmmm. Will it stay that way? Could it be that the "All settings in .ini file" Advanced Settings is now working? Just re-checked, and after using CC twice today and re-starting once, those keys remain sparsely populated. Interesting.

The other thing is having a software app that can temporarily turn Defender OFF, once the Tamper Protection is removed. I will not recommend or provide a link to any such program, but I have one. They are readily available, but hard to get installed, because they can turn off Defender, and Defender doesn't want them to turn it off. Off Tamper Protection allows you to turn off Defender. When Defender is off, any of its backup files can be deleted, by CCleaner or by any other method.

Microsoft/Windows Defender (the name changes with the weather) has many controls available. If you go to Windows Security > Virus & threat protection > Virus & threat protection settings > Manage settings, and scroll down, you'll find Tamper Protection, among other settings. If you toggle the slider for Tamper Protection to OFF, alarms will go off in the Defender internal system, and you'll see a flag in your notification tray. Until you toggle that setting back to ON.

Well, I'll be! I thought you had a direct line to the head coder, and a reserved spot on the to-do list at Piriform/Avast. Shucks! OTOH, if they got everything right the first time around, what would we do with the time we'd have on our hands if nobody complained to CC Community Forums?

I think you misunderstood me (possibly). I wasn't criticizing the devs at Piriform/Avast, I was just making a polite (I hope) suggestion. Taking something out is, after all, a lot easier than putting something new in. And yes, I've made mistakes, too. I remember the last time I made a mistake: it was a rainy Saturday in 1963, and ... aahng, you don't want to hear about it.

@nukecad: Agreed. So why not just remove this rule, which we agree does nothing and which, in any case, we would not recommend using even if it did work?

I agree completely with lmacri: "If Avast / Piriform is going to fix this cleaning rule so it works as expected (which would likely require temporary disabling of Microsoft Defender tamper protection, which sounds like a terrible idea) they should at least move this new option under Custom Clean | Windows | Advanced (i.e, instead of under System) just to warn users that this type of cleaning should not be done on a routine basis." In a simple test, I imaged my C:\ drive, then temporarily turned off Defender's Tamper Protection, and re-attempted the deletion of the files in that Backup folder. They deleted with no problem, and having thus determined that @lmacriwas correct in her assumption that Defender's Tamper Protection was preventing the deletion previously, I restored the deleted files and re-enabled Defender's Tamper Protection. I'd take it a step further than lmacri, though: rather than moving that rule to Advanced, I'd just remove it, period. Without disabling Defender's Tamper Protection, it does nothing, and if advanced users think of disabling Defender to make the rule work as expected, they will be doing a very risky thing. I only did this as a test, after creating a reliable drive image, and I do not recommend this procedure to anyone. "Just say No."

BTW, shutting off the sound is trivially easy in Windows. It's the pop-up window I want to shut off.

When I go to Tools > System Restore and choose my oldest one or two Restore Points to be removed, I always get that warning pop-up that says something like "All selected Restore Points will be removed." That warning is accompanied by a Windows system-set "Exclamation" sound. I would like to find a way to disable the warning pop-up (and its alarm sound), because I know perfectly well what I have asked CCleaner to do, and the warning is OK the first few times, to give inexperienced users a heads-up, but those of us who use the function every day and understand it should have a way to shut it off. Is there a way to shut it off? (In Settings (Advanced), "Hide warning messages" doesn't do it.)