Why won't CCleaner clear the multitude of duplicate Micrsoft Edge files without disabling Edge - I don't understand why?
I'm not sure what you are meaning there, are you using the Duplicate Finder or just cleaning?
If you are talking about general cleaning:
The junk and temporary files to be cleaned are open in Edge - and Windows won't let you delete a file that is open in an app.
So to be able to clear them out then you have to close that app, in this case you have to close Edge to clear the Edge files.
If you are talking about the Duplicate Finder:
Again, Windows will not let you delete files that are open - but it's more than that.
If these are duplicates and they are open then that shows that they are needed for Edge to work, they wouldn't be open otherwise.
<strong>You should not be removing duplicates of any system files.</strong>
System files often need duplicates saved in different places to work, and if you remove them then things may stop working properly.
Always have System Files ticked to 'Ignore' in Duplicate Finder. (Unless you have a specific, technical, reason for looking for them).
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I am talking about Duplicate Finder in Tools
In that case then as said above, if you remove any duplicates of files that are part of Edge then it may (will) stop working properly.