Thank you for posting this. It was very helpful for future-proofing my pre-7 version. There is one detail that I would like to add for users who are not familiar with modifying the Windows Defender Firewall.
You want to make the rules Outbound and not Inbound. As long as that is done, any attempt at an auto-update by the program will be blocked.
P.S. If you’re not reading this as a reply to WilliamZX11, search on his name to see the details of his original post on Nov 10.
It’s by far the worst daily temp file and registry cleaner now. After I did my first clean paying attention to all 3 tabs and thought alright looks like the old version just a all in one cleaner now. Nope, it DELETS the ENTIRE Download folder………..WTH were you guys thinking?? /uninstalled right away! Garbage now, rolled back to 6.39 or w/e it was and once I installed it clicked settings and turned off “automatically check for updates daily” and the smart cleaner. Any software app that deletes the entire “/C: Download Folder is just plain STUPID!
I notice you have mentioned these facts a few times now. While I agree saving a few MB of drive space is not an issue for most users these days, what seems to be overlooked is how 1000s of tiny, unnecessary temporary files may adversely affect drive performance - particularly on hard drives. The efficiency of Windows default defragging of hard drives, for example, may be significantly affected. Scanning for malware and Indexing are all impacted in some way. If nothing else, the time it takes to scan for malware, or perform some searches may significantly increase.
For those reasons, I generally recommend folks “clean the clutter” periodically just to keep those functions working optimally - in particular, before manually defragging or running scans. V6’s ability to “easily” configure CC to protect certain cookies made that cleaning task almost enjoyable - certainly not disappointing as it now is with V7.
Then of course, not everyone has monster drives, particularly as their boot drive. A quick look at many of the low-cost laptops on the market today, such as this $500 Dell, shows it comes with just a 500GB drives. After the OS, maybe Office and a few other apps, that 500GB drive no longer seems so big.
Without the ability to “EASILY” select (or deselect) which cookies to protect, I can no longer see any advantage to “waste disk space” with a 3rd party disk cleaner that offers no significant advantage over Windows own Disk Cleanup. 
And as a 20+ year user and promoter of CCleaner, I find that very sad indeed.
Hi Digerati:
The disk cleaner I’m currently using as a replacement for CCleaner allows users to keep important cookies. We aren’t allowed to discuss CCleaner alternatives in this public forum so I’ve sent you a private message.
Also note that Windows’ built-in Disk Cleaner does not clean temporary files in the hidden %TEMP% folder *** at C:\Users\<yourusername>\AppData\Local\Temp. My Win 10 machine typically accumulates ~ 300 to 400 MB of temporary files in that %TEMP% folder each week that can be cleaned with CCleaner and most other third-party disk cleaners. See my 08-Jan-2026 post # 2831281 in Kathy Stevens’ Windows 10 & 11 housecleaning in the AskWoody forum for a discussion about this Disk Cleaner limitation.
I have Firefox (my default browser) and MS Edge both configured to clean the bulk of my browsing history on exit, so if the Disk Cleanup tool built in to my Windows OS was able to clean the temporary files in my hidden C:\Users\<myrusername>\AppData\Local\Temp\ folder I probably wouldn’t even bother using a third-party disk cleaner.
*** NOTE: If you enter %TEMP% in the address bar of File Explorer this will open your hidden C:\Users\<yourusername>\AppData\Local\Temp\ folder, and you should be able to manually (and safely) delete any temporary files in that folder.
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Dell Inspiron 15 5584 * 64-bit Win 10 Pro v22H2 build 19045.6691 * Firefox v146.0.1 * Microsoft Defender v4.18.25110.6-1.1.25110.1 * Malwarebytes Standard v5.4.6.227-147.0.5453 * Macrium Reflect Free v8.0.7783 * CCleaner Free Portable v6.39.11548 * HDCleaner Portable 64-Bit v2.095
Yes, I agree. Since I’m not a gamer and don’t need a large disk for program installations, I use external drives for space, files, photos, internet links/locations, etc., along with a small 250GB drive. It’s also a big time-saver when I need to restore the main drive, which I do every six months to keep it clean. The changes made are minimal, and the external drives always remain intact with the critical files. In my case, CC cleaning and its proper optimization of space is really helpful.
Whether or not you are a gamer is immaterial. Lots of non-gamers need large amounts of disk space too.
Yes, maybe I stated incorrectly, many need large disks for good reasons-my assumption gaming may be one reason as of many for large. My point is that I don’t need to use much space, this is why the small drive space. I don’t utilize large programs. Just sharing a case for using low space.
And your use is atypical of many too. And then there are many who have few large programs needing lots of space, but have large numbers of photos, family videos, tunes or whatever to do take up lots of space. And I note lots of games don’t take massive amounts of space, and then many serious gamers only play a couple favorite games, or mainly “on-line” games.
Small drives are fine for many, and that is fine. However, one problem with small drives is Windows still needs a big chunk of free disk space for its various “housekeeping” chores to function most efficiently. These chores include defragging for hard drives and TRIM and wear-leveling for SSDs. And Windows itself needs space for temporary files and the page file.
And contrary to what some may think, that free space should NOT be determined by the size of the disk. The OS and those chores need the same amount of free space regardless if a 256GB drive, 1TB drive or a 4TB drive. I typically recommend reserving 30GB minimum - regardless of total capacity.
Obviously, 30GB from a 256GB drive is a large percentage compared to that same 30GB from a 1TB drive.
And contrary to what some still think, hitting write limits is not an issue with current generation SSDs. However, for those still concerned, unique to SSDs is the fact using MUCH BIGGER SSDs than needed allows TRIM and wear-leveling to spread the writes across a MUCH GREATER number of write locations, ensuring it will take even many more years before any write limits even come close to being reached.