Hi ADPP:
My own testing shows that if you perform a clean reinstall of CCleaner Free Portable (e.g., no registry keys at HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Piriform and HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Piriform, no tasks in Task Scheduler, etc.) and then unzip the ccleaner6xx.zip file on a removable USB stick where you would normally run a portable app, the first time you launch the bundled portable executable (32-bit CCleaner.exe or 64-bit CCleaner64.exe) it will still create dozens of registry entries, even if the setting at Options | Advanced | Save All Settings to INI File is enabled. See my 20-Jul-2023 post in Wisewiz’s Welcome back to CCleaner Professional ??? for details about one of those tests.
Crni’s 23-Jul-2023 post <here> in Wisewiz’s topic confirms this:
"I echo your concern as true portable app should NOT be creating anything inside registry or any files outside its portable folder. As I posted earlier, using CCleaner Portable for the first time on a new device will by default setup 50+ registry entries and will setup default configuration ignoring whatever is inside CCleaner.ini file that goes with portable instance.
However, simply deleting everything from the registry and blocking access to “shepherd.ff.avast.com” is sufficient to prevent CCleaner Free Portable to add any of the problematic entries back into registry. If you have an advanced router you can do it there, or can add an entry to the firewall, or simply add this to your hosts file: …"
My best guess is that this is the result of laziness on the part of Avast / Piriform. AFAIK, they simply take the main CCleaner.exe and CCleaner64.exe executables that come with the “standard” ccleaner6xx.exe installer and bundle those executables inside the portable ccleaner6xx.zip file without any modifications that would prevent the “portable” executables from creating registry entries.
Dell Inspiron 15 5584 * 64-bit Win 10 Pro v22H2 build 19045.5011 * Firefox v131.0.3 * Microsoft Defender v4.18.24080.9-1.1.24080.9 * Malwarebytes Premium v5.1.11.139-1.0.5072 * Macrium Reflect Free v8.0.7783 * CCleaner Free Portable v6.28.11297