I'm running the latest version of free ccleaner. It is very obvious that when cleaning, 'Internet Explorer History' takes longer than does cleaning all other items. This is curious since I have never used Internet Explorer. Is this normal behaviour?
Yes, it takes a long time to check and clean Internet Explorer History these days.
The reason why gets complicated, but it's to do with changes that Microsoft made to IE which make it harder to check and clean.
Even if you are not using IE CCleaner will check it unless you have it unticked.
If you are never using IE then you can untick this option, because there will never be any IE history to clean.
I have all entries for Edge and IE unticked - Except for 'Temporary Internet Files' in IE which is used by other MS applications, such as File explorer, to store temporary files.
(Some other applications may use IE 'cookies' as well, depends just what applications you do use).
PS. You can analyise/clean an unticked item by right clicking on it, which gives a pop up menu for that item alone.
Perfect answer. Thank you.