Ccleaner free - preferences

Hello

For the first time since I use Ccleaner free (several years), preferences were changed when switching to the new version (v5.74.8198 (64-bit)), without warning.

I lost the browsing history of all my browsers !!!

When checking for the problem, I realized that most of the preference boxes were checked, whereas the previous choices were usually kept.

I'm furious!

Regards

Hi @massie. First of all, we're very sorry to hear about how this happened as we can understand how upsetting this would be, especially when considering what has resulted from the loss of your settings; I've reported this issue to our development team so they can investigate further as we definitely don't want this to be a continued problem, going forward.

Meanwhile, and once you have your desired CCleaner configuration, I'd suggest that you save your CCleaner settings to an INI file. With this, you'll have a backup copy of your custom preferences so that you can easily restore them, if/when needed.

You can save the settings to an INI file using these steps:

  • Open CCleaner > click Options > Advanced
  • Check "Save all settings to INI file"

Afterwards, close out of CCleaner and the ini file will be created in C:\Program Files\CCleaner, named as "ccleaner.ini".

You can move this file to a location for storage (such as a USB flash drive, or another folder) and if settings are ever lost, simply move the file back into C:\Program Files\CCleaner to restore them.

Hi @massie

Did you uninstall your CCleaner before installing the new version?

Doing that will lose your setings/changed preferences everytime, and the newly installed version will start again with the default settings.

I'm always uninstalling/reinstalling different CCleaner versions when helping others on here so know that this will happen.

As Megan says the way around that is to tick the box to tell CCleaner to save your settings to an INI file, once you have that box ticked it will save your current settings and then automatically save any further changes that you make to those settings.

(If you untick the box again it will keep the current settings, but won't add any further changes).

You must remember to save a copy of the INI file to a different location than the CCleaner folder. (and save a new copy each time you change any settings).

That's because uninstalling CCleaner will remove the INI file from the CCleaner folder and so you have to put the copy back once you have reinstalled.

(I actually do it slightly differently - I make a copy of the INI in the CCleaner folder itself and rename it as 'Backup of CCleaner.ini', that will survive the uninstall and can be copied/renamed back to 'CCleaner.ini' following the reinstall. But I do also keep another copy elsewhere just in case).

If you didn't uninstall the older version then how did you get the update?

Did it update itself (as an Important Update), was it offered in a pop-up when you launched CCleaner, did you click the 'Check for updates' button , or did you download a new installer (maybe from the 'builds' page) and install that yourself?

Thanks for your answers and explanations on CCleaner.ini.

I didn't uninstall my CCleaner before installing the new version. It was offered in a pop-up when I launched my CCleaner.

In my personal browsers settings, the only box ticked is Cache. After installing, I usually check that these preferences are not changed and they are not changed. So I did not do it this time. Unfortunately ...

If you're sure that preferences can only be reset after uninstalling, the only explanation I see is that the previous version was installed after uninstalling and never used (otherwise, I would have already encountered the problem).

Regards

1 hour ago, massie said:
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	<p>
		I didn't uninstall my CCleaner before installing the new version. It was offered in a pop-up when I launched my CCleaner.
	</p>
</div>

That should help the devs investigate what may have happened.

I'm not sure what may have happened, the v5.74 update is a bit different to usual as it's classed as an 'Important Update' but nobody else is reporting this issue of losing their settings. (yet?).

Mine updated without problems, but I do have an ini file, and I did update manually by downloading an installer from the builds page rather than updating through CCleaner itself so it's not the same as yourself.


(If I get time I may go back a version, remove the ini, and update through CCleaner - just to see what happens).

Isn't it always the case that the one time you don't check is when something goes wrong?

Quote
<div class="ipsQuote_contents ipsClearfix" data-gramm="false">
	<p>
		the only explanation I see is that the previous version was installed after uninstalling and never used (otherwise, I would have already encountered the problem).
	</p>
</div>

That is a possible explanation, is it likely that you may have done that?

PS.I know this isn't what happend to you, but just in case you didn't know:

The other way that (some) things that are not checked will be cleaned is if you run Health Check.


Health Check uses it's own cleaning rules which you can't change, and it takes no notice of what is ticked or unticked for Custom Clean.

4 hours ago, massie said:
<div class="ipsQuote_contents ipsClearfix" data-gramm="false">
	<p>
		I didn't uninstall my CCleaner before installing the new version. It was offered in a pop-up when I launched my CCleaner.
	</p>
</div>

Do you remember what version you were on prior to updating to CCleaner 5.74? Was this CCleaner Free or CCleaner Professional?

The only thing I can say is that the latest version downloaded from the site is v5.72 on September 27th.

So it would be the last one I installed, but I can't remember under what conditions (I usually don't uninstall uninstall unless the installation program asks me), or if I've used it since (I don't have a planned launch), or if there was an update from CCleaner.

Sorry.

Regards

17 hours ago, nukecad said:
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	<p>
		That is a possible explanation, is it likely that you may have done that?


		 
	</p>
</div>

It's possible! ?

17 hours ago, nukecad said:
<div class="ipsQuote_contents">
	<p>
		<span style="background-color:#ffffff;color:#382e23;font-size:14px;">PS.I know this isn't what happend to you, but just in case you didn't know:</span><br style="background-color:#ffffff;color:#382e23;font-size:14px;" /><span style="background-color:#ffffff;color:#382e23;font-size:14px;">The other way that (some) things that are not checked will be cleaned is if you run Health Check.</span><br style="background-color:#ffffff;color:#382e23;font-size:14px;" /><span style="background-color:#ffffff;color:#382e23;font-size:14px;">Health Check uses it's own cleaning rules which you can't change, and it takes no notice of what is ticked or unticked for Custom Clean.</span>
	</p>
</div>

Thanks for the information provided on Health check. I take note of it for the future, but actually I did not run Helth check.